Where's the Beef?

re: Where's the Beef?

Ivan Towlson — Wed, 31 Mar 2004 10:53:00 GMT

Have you seen Richard Bartle's book "Designing Virtual Worlds"? One of the things he talks about is player-originated content, though he thinks of it mainly in terms of the "elder game." He does identify quite a few implementation issues in terms of content quality, intellectual property and so on. Well worth a look.

That aside, I agree with your take on MMORPGs -- so much potential, turned into a repetitive mechanical rat race. The amount of intrigue, variety and depth of challenge you could have with thousands of players is unbelievable. And what do we get? Reheated Fantasy Setting Number 18 with cookie-cutter characters and computer-moderated generic dungeon bashes. Bah.

re: Where's the Beef?

Daniel Jin — Wed, 31 Mar 2004 12:43:00 GMT

MMORPGs in the market today are nothing more than a fancied up version of MUD on those old BBS boards. keystrokes are replaced by mouse clicks, scrolling text replaced by colorful graphics, but they are essentially the same thing. I agree, game designers can only do so much with original content. to overcome this limitation, the control has to be put into the gamers' hands to generate endless content. provide a rich backdrop, throw everyone into one big world instead of these parallel shards or zones or whatever they are called in different games, and let the players make up the story for each other. easier said than done though.

re: Where's the Beef?

Scott — Wed, 31 Mar 2004 14:30:00 GMT

Daniel, I disagree to a certain extent. I think the current MMORPGs are even LESS interactive than the old MUDs. If you played some MUDs enough you were eventually given enough access to design certain parts of the world. Effectively putting the inmates in charge of running the asylum. This was great! Plus the fact that there wasn't any graphical content, or if there was it was viewed offline, meant that the players had to use their imagination more. This lent itself to lots of in-game story creation.

The only games I've seen that let the users build and DM their own worlds have been the Vampire:The Masquerade game that came out a while back and NeverWinter Nights. While neither of them can be seen as MMORPGs, they do at least allow for lots of re-playabilty and user driven story creation. I've heard that you can create a persistent world with NWN, but I haven't logged on to any to see what they are like.

re: Where's the Beef?

Valorie Osterman — Wed, 31 Mar 2004 14:53:00 GMT

I think what you say is pretty true. However, I must say that I find playing Asheron's Call really neat. I've been playing since it started (3 years ago? Maybe 4?) and I still mostly play the first character I ever rolled. Some months I play 100+ hours and some months I play 4 hours, but since content is updated every month, something is different every time I play. Even old dungeons get revamped every year or so. There are many people who do the whole "play a gazillion hours, only play the most powerful character in the game" thing but they are like an oil fire: burn intensely and then they are gone.

The really big thing for me that makes AC special is that the developers actually listen to the player base. That doesn't mean they don't do things everyone says they'll hate, but if, after we try it we still don't like it, they frequently modify or remove the feature. The developers work hard to balance cool stuff between powerlevelers and casual players, and between individual players and group players.

AC will be a difficult game to follow in my eyes.

re: Where's the Beef?

Brandon Paddock — Wed, 31 Mar 2004 14:58:00 GMT

I've posted a response to this entry in my own Blog, here: http://www.thespoke.net/MyBlog/BHPaddock/MyBlog.aspx

Let me know what you think!

re: Where's the Beef?

damien morton — Wed, 31 Mar 2004 15:16:00 GMT

I used to GM role-playing games akin to dungeon master; one player would be given a certain amount of resources to design a dungeon, while the other players would plumb said dungeon.

I havent played MMO games very much, prefering to play FPS games such as BF1942. I did, however, play Planetside for about 6 months. What was interesting is that Planetside, in the period of 6 months, managed to release a very small amount of content (two vehicles, really) compared to the various mods for BF1942. Admittedly, we are talking about 2 different games, but Planetside is billed as a massively multiplayer FPS while BF1942 is an FPS with a massive amount of players.

What I realized is that no companies creative department can possibly compete with the imagination and creative capabilities of a community of players measured in the tens of thousands. I can picture a truly innovative MMO company which dedicated itself to guiding and seeding the creatvity of its players, rather than trying to control them. A difficult and dangerous path to take, but possibly no more dangerous than limiting the creative potential of a game for the sake of simple control.

re: Where's the Beef?

The Younger Brother — Fri, 02 Apr 2004 22:06:00 GMT

God help me gain the strength to stop playing Asheron's Call. I too have been playing this bloody game for 4+ years. The only difference between AC and crack is that AC only costs $12.95 a month.

Valorie I don't agree with your assessment of AC and I think it actually falls right into the bleakness of MMORPG's that Matt talks about. Sure they add content every month, but there is nothing random or unique about it. It is fixed for everyone and within hours of new content being released a majority if not all has been mastered to the extend you can read all about it on a cheat site. People actually attempt to get recognition for being the first one to post all the ins and outs of new content before anyone else.

If a quest or new content is really overly hyped before the servers are updated you can bet for the first week the new dungeon or quest will be camped which makes it by far too simply to complete with many people all playing follow the leader.

Then after you do the new content in the first day or two after the update you're pushed back into nothingness for another month until the next pellet pops out of a hole in the wall and you repeat the process.

I can't count the number of times I've done the same quest over and over with absolutely no variance between each run. The only difference might be with the people I fellow with during the quest.

What is missing from AC is the ability for the community to effect the game. People need to be able to create content or at a minimum alter the landscape. Towns should be able to grow from nothing while old ones rot away. Caves and tunnels could be dug and through magic, critters could be conjured up to protect rooms or areas outside.

I think there needs to be a radical shift in the way MMORPG's are designed. A step away from the fixed creation or towns, dungeons, quests, treasure, weapons, and armor to a more free form world where the people do all the creation and all the game designer really does is provide the resources and game dynamics to make it all happen.