30th November 2004, 12:14 AM
First, I'm going to say that I agree with pretty much everything you said. :) Oh yeah, and this post is quite long... yeah... took me a solid hour to write, I think... I hope someone actually reads it. :D
Also, despite how this post may sound I am not suggesting that this genre needs a massive overhaul or that traditional MMORPGs have no place. They do, and they definitely seem like they could be fun. If they didn't have monthly fees I'd certainly have at least one. But with a genre with so much promise comes so many grounds for improvements...
Second, in the beta I played several characters. I played a female Night Elf Druid (on a normal server, got to level 8), a female Human Mage (normal, got to level 8 or 9), and a male Dwarven Paladin (level 4 or 5, RP server). All were fun character and were in very different places... same gameplay, however, of course.
You do it by not making your game a MMORPG. I know I'm going to sound like a broken record, but I have to say 'Guild Wars' again... or if you want more cases, how about Diablo II or perhaps Neverwinter Nights? All games that have a community aspect but also a mission progression that gives you a very real and impact-seeming role. How is it done? Instancing. That is, having your missions not all happen in the one world but having it be a specifically crafted mission that just your group goes through. It does not have the 'massively multiplayer' aspect to the missions, but it lets the game designers make missions where you feel like you are really doing things. It also allows much, much more intresting quests. Your fifteenth "collect items from monsters to return to get a prize" quest in WoW will be dull, no matter how interesting the story about wanting to kill a big pig that keeps getting into the farmers' fields is... it is lessened when a minuite later the pig respawns. Yes, it reduces player choice and means that the game is much more a linear title than a big open one so it's a different kind of game, but from the perspective of a specific mission it allows for some much more intersting missions. It also does not preclude standard 'kill things' missions if you also have an "overworld" you can explore with such missions in it...
Diablo's case is very similar to GW but the differences should be mentioned. It doesn't have as interesting or unique missions because of the random design and the focus on killing things. However, it still has focus with the progression style of the levels and how it keeps you moving forward, as opposed to a MMORPG where you can go fifteen directions if you so choose... much closer to GW than WoW. Except perhaps the missions have more replay value because of the random map generation (though I'd argue that they are so similar looking that that element doesn't matter much and the replay value isn't in Diablo because of random map generation). But its style contrasts effectively with a MMORPG in showing how by having instanced missions you can give the player a much greater sense of impact on the world. The fact that (in both Diablo and Guild Wars) you can endlessly replay the missions and do those acts again only minimally lessens that sense of accomplishment and greatly helps the lastability of the game.
On the topic of accomplishment, I mostly covered that in my last post. It's a pretty much unsolvable issue with MMORPGs that you can't really get around unless you change the game design from being a standard MMORPG to being something else. It's also one of the problems of the genre and one of the factors that leads to so many people playing these games for the sole purpose to make their character better. After all, it's all you really have to play for... to access regions restricted to higher player levels and to make your character more powerful. This limits the kinds of accomplishment you will get from the game and definitely increases the sense in players that they are "grinding" and not playing for fun or for much of any real purpose... I know that in such games having something to have a real purpose ABOUT is quite hard to think of, but I guess I'm saying that it's a fundamental flaw in the genre. Does it make the games not fun? Of course not! WoW is a quite fun game! But when I look at it and think critically, this is definitely an issue that game game cannot solve.
I should talk about the flip side of this coin, however. What you get is a huge and connected world that is nearly seamless. Few load times (in WoW anyway), huge zones, fewer things that break the sense that this is a real world that is different than in most games (that is, warping between missions, etc)... the sense of scale and of the continuity of the world is great. And you eventually just accept that you will not be making a lasting impact on the world and play the game solely for character advancement and perhaps socialization.
This connects to one of my biggest complaints about Diablo -- socialization! That is, in Diablo II you go into the world online and there are some other players there but the game gives you no real incentive to party, no gameplay aspect really benefits from partying very much, etc... you just wander around by yourself in a game that happens to have some other players in it. In my opinion it just does not work. The heart of a RPG is playing a role, and since the beginning of the genre (in pen and paper games) a huge aspect of that has been interacting with others and working as a group. Soloing is all well and good in a computer game, but once it goes multiplayer partying should be a major aspect of the game and should be made simple.
What do I think of WoW? I think it's okay. It's easy to party (and you can set the 'looking for party' flag to make things easier if you want), but finding people to party with is the real question. This is harder. I only really played the open beta four or five days (I had it over a week, but didn't play at all for three or four days in the middle), and only in one of those did I party. That one night was probably the best one of the week. Three of us worked together for some hours until it just got too late (early) to not go to bed... While the game is okay by yourself, a party really does make it more intresting... that is, when you have good companions -- that is, if you are in a party but no one is going to say anything what's the point? But in this kind of game if you're like that you probably aren't going to be asking people to join a party anyway... anyway, the main problem is actually finding people who want to party. Also, in WoW every character is self sufficient. This means that no one actually NEEDS anyone else to survive, like in Diablo II. However, the game design does allow for groups to work together to reasonable degrees of success so if you do it can be fun.
Guild Wars is quite different of course. The overworld part is like WoW except it's all instanced so you only can ask to party in the main town areas and almost no one is. The missions though are instanced to unless you're a solitary type and want to go through them with bots as your party (you can hire henchmen) you'll be partying in the team gathering zones outside each mission... the result is you'll mostly end up in random parties unless you're grouping with friends or your clan. This means a wide variety of companions... but on the whole because if forces you to group (and indeed the game is very strongly designed around the idea that parties are the ideal and that no one should be playing the game alone (many classes have lots of problems being alone and you'll really want henchmen if you have no party)... I really like the system. It wouldn't work for a traditional MMORPG of course, but GW is trying to be different so that's fine... and I'd say that it's a great game. It doesn't have the continuous world of a MMORPG (that is you warp around on the map, have loadtimes, etc) and also doesn't have the potential infinite play (if you want a game you'll be playing many days a week for a year get a MMORPG, not GW), but it doesn't have the monthly fee either so that latter on at least is okay, I'd say.
My only other experience in the genre is some pretty limited play in the Ryzom beta, so I have a lot less experience with them so I don't know the conventions as well... as for the tedium, I only played each character for a while so I hadn't really gotten to most of the grind part yet. It's fun in the beginning... it's later, when you're working and working to level up just to level up, that these games get into the territory of grinding, I've definitely heard (and understand the logic behind). Quests in WoW? I got all of the ones I could, of course, but I was saying that sometimes you cannot get both at the same time -- in several quests I'd get the first quest to investigate a cave and would have to go back to get the second one that says 'beat the boss'. Which is really annoying. So even if you work to get all the quests you cannot avoid being forced to repeat areas just to complete quests...
As for travelling, I believe that it is faster, but that says a lot more about the scale and pacing of MMORPGs than it does about the small size of WoW. I know that having to run for a couple of minuites across the forest to get back to my body is a pain, as is every trip back to town... it's a bit better with the NE and their 50% faster wisps, though it still takes some time. (on that note, I left my Druid in the bottom of a very challenging (for an 8th level character) dungeon next to the boss and his four cronies... two tries at getting away and I just gave up and left her there... :D)
Oh, and I never used any of the other forms of transportation. I also didn't really explore the capitals. It was only a few days, after all, and these games are based around the fundamental priciple of taking many, many days to see much progress... this one is paced faster than others but it still has a strong element of that.
I definitely think now that I should have been level 10 before trying that dungeon with my Druid... Bear Form would have helped so much... but levelling two levels would be a pain so I didn't bother... and it was really hard and I died a bunch and ended up quitting with my corpse right by the (still undefeated by me) boss. :(
Absolutely. Variation would be awesome. I know that you cannot replicate the variety of the quests in a instanced or single-player game exactly in a MMO title, but you can do something more intersting than THIS. Escort or protection missions would be great. They could be implemented, I'm sure. If there are any they aren't too common for sure... it'd also of course be great to see conversation-based ones. I love the story aspect of RPGs and think that when applied it can be one of their greatest strengths, so missions that involved conversation and wordplay (choosing the right dialogue choices, etc) and entering that as a major aspect of the game would be fantastic. I'm not asking for Torment here, even... even Baldur's Gate would be nice compared to what we've got in this supposedly so story-focused of MMORPGs... dialogue puzzles! Quests solved by words. Some statistic that measures such things. Puzzles (as you say later, they are conspicuously absent in MMORPGs) like Baldur's Gate has where you are given riddles and have to solve them (in the game design sphere it's your choice whether to give them choices or make them type in answers -- the former would be the standard these days, but it'd be neat to see the latter, I think, if frusterating... but it's a MMORPG so you could always just ask for help. :)), but if you get them wrong take damage or have to fight something or something.
There also should be as you say more intresting missions. The main problem here is most of the ideas I come up with are hamstrung by the facts of MMORPGs. The constant quotias and 'I must kill two more of these" are stupid but needed because the whole game is open, not instanced. You can't simply say "okay here there are five ogres for the party to face, then here there are four and two Ogre-Mages, and then here is the boss and his three cronies" because you have to hae constant waves of spawning goons to deal with all of the potential players there... it's both interesting on the player's standpoint (being able to help others or get past hard areas by waiting for others to come) and frusterating (waiting in line with others for some monsters you all need to spawn, not having as much stuff to fight when an area is particularly populated). I don't see a way to avoid the quotas given the facts of the genre. This is unfortunate given how tedious they get, though... but then again it's cool to always have other players around... it leaves me conflicted. Both instancing and open world have their own good and bad sides, really... both have fun parts to their approach and problems... which is better? I don't know.
Instancing, however, does definitely allow for more mission variety. I guess the main question is if you think that this gain in mission style and quality is worth the loss in the feeling of it being a "real world" and in the constant sense of a flowing (coming and going) humanity around you.
Anyway, back to the central question here (and in the rest of your post), how to make missions in MMORPGs more interesting. The fact that Blizzard, who is great at such things, ended up with this as their result really is telling. They tried and got not a great variety of mission styles but great writing to back up their missions, lots of missions, and constant sequence that you are always doing some quests while you are playing the game. This suggests that doing something interesting would be hard. Still, I'm sure that they could do some things. One would be the dialogue-as-puzzles option, which I'd LOVE to see in these games. More? Hmm... some/more 'protect', 'guard location X', or 'escort' missions, some instanced dungeons where you can be more specific with enemies and their layout, areas which force cooperation with other players in some fashion or make them work in a team to succeed, and puzzles (that is, not just 'kill' quests but also ones that are genuine puzzles like any single player RPG would have, and now that I think about it something almost totally missing from MMORPGs... and missed, I would say, along with conversations that involve you choosing or making responses and the puzzles and gameplay that that element of any good single player RPG represents -- talking with other humans in a MMORPG is one thing, but not really a replacement for this on gameplay terms as that does not represent much gameplay besides PvP combat, which should be recognized as a major element of most of these games and something that is unique to multiplayer titles like puzzles (in the world or with dialogue) seem to be to single player ones so far. The difference of course is that PvP would never work quite the same in a single player RPG while dialogue could be implemented into an online one...)... that'd be a good start, anyway, and definitely seems possible even given the bounds of the genre. It'd help with the lack of variety and the tedium. I wouldn't fix things totally, but some things cannot be changed in this genre... and Blizz helps a lot with its good writing and constant sequence of missions to attempt.
Also, despite how this post may sound I am not suggesting that this genre needs a massive overhaul or that traditional MMORPGs have no place. They do, and they definitely seem like they could be fun. If they didn't have monthly fees I'd certainly have at least one. But with a genre with so much promise comes so many grounds for improvements...
Second, in the beta I played several characters. I played a female Night Elf Druid (on a normal server, got to level 8), a female Human Mage (normal, got to level 8 or 9), and a male Dwarven Paladin (level 4 or 5, RP server). All were fun character and were in very different places... same gameplay, however, of course.
Quote:Honestly a system where individual players DO have an impact on world development WOULD be cool, but it's just not possible right now. The closest thing to that would be a system wherein a massive number of servers, like 100, are all in different stages of development, so the new players can always find a "fresh" world to develop on their own.
You do it by not making your game a MMORPG. I know I'm going to sound like a broken record, but I have to say 'Guild Wars' again... or if you want more cases, how about Diablo II or perhaps Neverwinter Nights? All games that have a community aspect but also a mission progression that gives you a very real and impact-seeming role. How is it done? Instancing. That is, having your missions not all happen in the one world but having it be a specifically crafted mission that just your group goes through. It does not have the 'massively multiplayer' aspect to the missions, but it lets the game designers make missions where you feel like you are really doing things. It also allows much, much more intresting quests. Your fifteenth "collect items from monsters to return to get a prize" quest in WoW will be dull, no matter how interesting the story about wanting to kill a big pig that keeps getting into the farmers' fields is... it is lessened when a minuite later the pig respawns. Yes, it reduces player choice and means that the game is much more a linear title than a big open one so it's a different kind of game, but from the perspective of a specific mission it allows for some much more intersting missions. It also does not preclude standard 'kill things' missions if you also have an "overworld" you can explore with such missions in it...
Diablo's case is very similar to GW but the differences should be mentioned. It doesn't have as interesting or unique missions because of the random design and the focus on killing things. However, it still has focus with the progression style of the levels and how it keeps you moving forward, as opposed to a MMORPG where you can go fifteen directions if you so choose... much closer to GW than WoW. Except perhaps the missions have more replay value because of the random map generation (though I'd argue that they are so similar looking that that element doesn't matter much and the replay value isn't in Diablo because of random map generation). But its style contrasts effectively with a MMORPG in showing how by having instanced missions you can give the player a much greater sense of impact on the world. The fact that (in both Diablo and Guild Wars) you can endlessly replay the missions and do those acts again only minimally lessens that sense of accomplishment and greatly helps the lastability of the game.
Quote:But in general, you pretty much pointed out exactly the main issue. It's an MMORPG, but rather than feel like you play a part in the development of "the world", the main goal is very self centered, that is, the development of your character and your character alone. Allying is fun and all, but the very design of these games forces that sort of mindset of how this will affect your character, since it certainly won't affect the world. With the bandit example, they explain it in the sense of "you have certainly helped in the constant struggle against their encroachment, now we can hold them off", to sorta explain that. Sure, there is a story that advances, but only you the player is aware of it, and it's the same thing for everyone, in secret. It HAS to be that way until technology can allow for a fully dynamic world, but it still sorta blows...
On the topic of accomplishment, I mostly covered that in my last post. It's a pretty much unsolvable issue with MMORPGs that you can't really get around unless you change the game design from being a standard MMORPG to being something else. It's also one of the problems of the genre and one of the factors that leads to so many people playing these games for the sole purpose to make their character better. After all, it's all you really have to play for... to access regions restricted to higher player levels and to make your character more powerful. This limits the kinds of accomplishment you will get from the game and definitely increases the sense in players that they are "grinding" and not playing for fun or for much of any real purpose... I know that in such games having something to have a real purpose ABOUT is quite hard to think of, but I guess I'm saying that it's a fundamental flaw in the genre. Does it make the games not fun? Of course not! WoW is a quite fun game! But when I look at it and think critically, this is definitely an issue that game game cannot solve.
I should talk about the flip side of this coin, however. What you get is a huge and connected world that is nearly seamless. Few load times (in WoW anyway), huge zones, fewer things that break the sense that this is a real world that is different than in most games (that is, warping between missions, etc)... the sense of scale and of the continuity of the world is great. And you eventually just accept that you will not be making a lasting impact on the world and play the game solely for character advancement and perhaps socialization.
This connects to one of my biggest complaints about Diablo -- socialization! That is, in Diablo II you go into the world online and there are some other players there but the game gives you no real incentive to party, no gameplay aspect really benefits from partying very much, etc... you just wander around by yourself in a game that happens to have some other players in it. In my opinion it just does not work. The heart of a RPG is playing a role, and since the beginning of the genre (in pen and paper games) a huge aspect of that has been interacting with others and working as a group. Soloing is all well and good in a computer game, but once it goes multiplayer partying should be a major aspect of the game and should be made simple.
What do I think of WoW? I think it's okay. It's easy to party (and you can set the 'looking for party' flag to make things easier if you want), but finding people to party with is the real question. This is harder. I only really played the open beta four or five days (I had it over a week, but didn't play at all for three or four days in the middle), and only in one of those did I party. That one night was probably the best one of the week. Three of us worked together for some hours until it just got too late (early) to not go to bed... While the game is okay by yourself, a party really does make it more intresting... that is, when you have good companions -- that is, if you are in a party but no one is going to say anything what's the point? But in this kind of game if you're like that you probably aren't going to be asking people to join a party anyway... anyway, the main problem is actually finding people who want to party. Also, in WoW every character is self sufficient. This means that no one actually NEEDS anyone else to survive, like in Diablo II. However, the game design does allow for groups to work together to reasonable degrees of success so if you do it can be fun.
Guild Wars is quite different of course. The overworld part is like WoW except it's all instanced so you only can ask to party in the main town areas and almost no one is. The missions though are instanced to unless you're a solitary type and want to go through them with bots as your party (you can hire henchmen) you'll be partying in the team gathering zones outside each mission... the result is you'll mostly end up in random parties unless you're grouping with friends or your clan. This means a wide variety of companions... but on the whole because if forces you to group (and indeed the game is very strongly designed around the idea that parties are the ideal and that no one should be playing the game alone (many classes have lots of problems being alone and you'll really want henchmen if you have no party)... I really like the system. It wouldn't work for a traditional MMORPG of course, but GW is trying to be different so that's fine... and I'd say that it's a great game. It doesn't have the continuous world of a MMORPG (that is you warp around on the map, have loadtimes, etc) and also doesn't have the potential infinite play (if you want a game you'll be playing many days a week for a year get a MMORPG, not GW), but it doesn't have the monthly fee either so that latter on at least is okay, I'd say.
Quote:Still, it was a fun game and of all these sorts of games, it's certainly the best I've played. You make a note about the tedium, but let me say that, and maybe this is just because of the ones I've played before, I didn't feel the tedium. It really felt like it was flowing naturally. I sorta learned in the past to not really take quests one at a time, but all at once as they are thrown at me. In that way, I sorta march along and will complete quests based soley on what objective is closest to me . Travelling, I have found, is still a lot quicker than in other games. Speeding it up would be appreciated. For example, getting horses should be much quicker. Airships are totally free and available to everyone though, unlike any other game I've played, so that's a great start.
My only other experience in the genre is some pretty limited play in the Ryzom beta, so I have a lot less experience with them so I don't know the conventions as well... as for the tedium, I only played each character for a while so I hadn't really gotten to most of the grind part yet. It's fun in the beginning... it's later, when you're working and working to level up just to level up, that these games get into the territory of grinding, I've definitely heard (and understand the logic behind). Quests in WoW? I got all of the ones I could, of course, but I was saying that sometimes you cannot get both at the same time -- in several quests I'd get the first quest to investigate a cave and would have to go back to get the second one that says 'beat the boss'. Which is really annoying. So even if you work to get all the quests you cannot avoid being forced to repeat areas just to complete quests...
As for travelling, I believe that it is faster, but that says a lot more about the scale and pacing of MMORPGs than it does about the small size of WoW. I know that having to run for a couple of minuites across the forest to get back to my body is a pain, as is every trip back to town... it's a bit better with the NE and their 50% faster wisps, though it still takes some time. (on that note, I left my Druid in the bottom of a very challenging (for an 8th level character) dungeon next to the boss and his four cronies... two tries at getting away and I just gave up and left her there... :D)
Oh, and I never used any of the other forms of transportation. I also didn't really explore the capitals. It was only a few days, after all, and these games are based around the fundamental priciple of taking many, many days to see much progress... this one is paced faster than others but it still has a strong element of that.
Quote:I will say the nature of these quests is rather... redundant... While you do move from quest to quest VERY quickly, as in, you don't have to spend literally DAYS levelling up just to be able to go on another quest (instead you get the levels needed to go on a large number of new quests while completing quests you are already on), they are all the same. Yes, kill this, collect a certain number of these, take them back to that.
I definitely think now that I should have been level 10 before trying that dungeon with my Druid... Bear Form would have helped so much... but levelling two levels would be a pain so I didn't bother... and it was really hard and I died a bunch and ended up quitting with my corpse right by the (still undefeated by me) boss. :(
Quote:Now, really I would like to see quests as varied as in normal RPGs. I think that IS doable with current technology. I'd like to see, using the familiar (to everyone here) KOTOR as an example, quests involging negotiating with people, rescuing people from dungeons and escorting them out (actually I believe there are "escort missions", but from that termanology I suspect those will get redundant too), and puzzle solving. I'd like to have to wander into a cave and walk up to a mural with some cryptic comment, examine various strange artifacts through the dungeon, find weird items, and suddenly find out the two relate, but it's something like the colors of the items need to be matched with the mechanism using that cryptic clue as the terms of the match, like which ones are opposites on the "color wheel", or like each color and each device (which suddenly have symbols on them why not) match up with some legendary hero's color and symbol and you need to remember some old diary you read to figure out the matches.
Absolutely. Variation would be awesome. I know that you cannot replicate the variety of the quests in a instanced or single-player game exactly in a MMO title, but you can do something more intersting than THIS. Escort or protection missions would be great. They could be implemented, I'm sure. If there are any they aren't too common for sure... it'd also of course be great to see conversation-based ones. I love the story aspect of RPGs and think that when applied it can be one of their greatest strengths, so missions that involved conversation and wordplay (choosing the right dialogue choices, etc) and entering that as a major aspect of the game would be fantastic. I'm not asking for Torment here, even... even Baldur's Gate would be nice compared to what we've got in this supposedly so story-focused of MMORPGs... dialogue puzzles! Quests solved by words. Some statistic that measures such things. Puzzles (as you say later, they are conspicuously absent in MMORPGs) like Baldur's Gate has where you are given riddles and have to solve them (in the game design sphere it's your choice whether to give them choices or make them type in answers -- the former would be the standard these days, but it'd be neat to see the latter, I think, if frusterating... but it's a MMORPG so you could always just ask for help. :)), but if you get them wrong take damage or have to fight something or something.
There also should be as you say more intresting missions. The main problem here is most of the ideas I come up with are hamstrung by the facts of MMORPGs. The constant quotias and 'I must kill two more of these" are stupid but needed because the whole game is open, not instanced. You can't simply say "okay here there are five ogres for the party to face, then here there are four and two Ogre-Mages, and then here is the boss and his three cronies" because you have to hae constant waves of spawning goons to deal with all of the potential players there... it's both interesting on the player's standpoint (being able to help others or get past hard areas by waiting for others to come) and frusterating (waiting in line with others for some monsters you all need to spawn, not having as much stuff to fight when an area is particularly populated). I don't see a way to avoid the quotas given the facts of the genre. This is unfortunate given how tedious they get, though... but then again it's cool to always have other players around... it leaves me conflicted. Both instancing and open world have their own good and bad sides, really... both have fun parts to their approach and problems... which is better? I don't know.
Instancing, however, does definitely allow for more mission variety. I guess the main question is if you think that this gain in mission style and quality is worth the loss in the feeling of it being a "real world" and in the constant sense of a flowing (coming and going) humanity around you.
Anyway, back to the central question here (and in the rest of your post), how to make missions in MMORPGs more interesting. The fact that Blizzard, who is great at such things, ended up with this as their result really is telling. They tried and got not a great variety of mission styles but great writing to back up their missions, lots of missions, and constant sequence that you are always doing some quests while you are playing the game. This suggests that doing something interesting would be hard. Still, I'm sure that they could do some things. One would be the dialogue-as-puzzles option, which I'd LOVE to see in these games. More? Hmm... some/more 'protect', 'guard location X', or 'escort' missions, some instanced dungeons where you can be more specific with enemies and their layout, areas which force cooperation with other players in some fashion or make them work in a team to succeed, and puzzles (that is, not just 'kill' quests but also ones that are genuine puzzles like any single player RPG would have, and now that I think about it something almost totally missing from MMORPGs... and missed, I would say, along with conversations that involve you choosing or making responses and the puzzles and gameplay that that element of any good single player RPG represents -- talking with other humans in a MMORPG is one thing, but not really a replacement for this on gameplay terms as that does not represent much gameplay besides PvP combat, which should be recognized as a major element of most of these games and something that is unique to multiplayer titles like puzzles (in the world or with dialogue) seem to be to single player ones so far. The difference of course is that PvP would never work quite the same in a single player RPG while dialogue could be implemented into an online one...)... that'd be a good start, anyway, and definitely seems possible even given the bounds of the genre. It'd help with the lack of variety and the tedium. I wouldn't fix things totally, but some things cannot be changed in this genre... and Blizz helps a lot with its good writing and constant sequence of missions to attempt.