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People ask me what I think are the flaws in the current crop of MMORPGs. Ok, well, people is probably the wrong word there. Someone asked me. But since I'm getting dangerously sparse on Cant articles, I'll at least answer them here. Specifically I believe they were asking me what problems exist that will be fixed in the next generation of MMOs
(1).
So I'll list them here, in no particular order
(2):
By far, the biggest thing that's missing, in my humble opinion, is the continuing story arc. This is rather odd, because one of the first large MMOs (Asheron's Call) had this exact aspect -- each month new challenges, monsters and features were uploaded to the game -- but along with all that the ongoing "story" of the game was updated. Cities were destroyed, factions moved about the lands, Gods appeared and did combat with other Gods, etc... The players were left feeling like they were living in a thriving, breathing world. As a result, Asheron's Call had (has!) the greatest player retention rate -- people start playing AC and continue playing it longer than any other MMO, despite horribly outdated graphics and other glaring previous generation MMO flaws. I'm pleased to note that several new games are attempting to emulate this aspect (Star Wars Galaxies & Horizons to name two) -- but their efforts still seem to fall short of what Asheron's Call accomplished, and I think to get a run away hit someone will have to exceed AC's efforts. Related to the overall story is the problem that, in most games, the players don't actually feel like their a part of the universe -- definitely at the start. Rat killing is often associated with the start of any player's career. They might look like proud warriors and powerful mages, but in order for the game designers to make the monsters at the end of the game look impressive the monsters at the beginning of the game are puny by comparison (usually rats, grass snakes and moths). There are plenty of additional little things in most games that continually put the players in their place as "not the hero" -- things like shopkeepers & mounts that "con" (3) as being absolute combat badasses compared to the players. Mythica was planning on at least starting players off as Gods, with mortals already standing in awe of them & City of Heroes supposedly also starts the player off as full fledged heroes. Another flaw that no game (well, except for poor dear Planetside) solved is the inability of casual players to meet up and play with dedicated players. This is a sticky problem... Planetside did it by essentially removing almost all benefits to leveling -- Joe Smoe could pick up a rifle or a mecha the day he joined and be just as much a help to his empire as the long standing veterans (well, except that the vets had practical human experience playing the game, and knew where to hide and who to shoot and how to raid). Still... It was a great effort, and made for a wonderful game which players could jump in and have fun with friends at the word go. Unfortunately this trade off seemed to have done in Planetside... it's dying on the vine, and my guess (I haven't seen any figures) would be that there's no player retention... because the veterans feel they've earned nothing. The lack of leveling has given the players no sense of accomplishment, except for what is earned in the moment. Newcomer City of Heroes has their new sidekick system, which will let junior players temporarily compete at their dedicated buddies exalted levels, but we'll just have to wait to see how successful CoH will be with this system. One of the oldies but goodies is, of course, spawn camping. Many games will claim to have solved this, only to see that it crops up in one form or another over the lifetime of almost every game. The worst part is that many game companies have admitted that, in some forms, spawn camping is desirable as it leads to socialization between players who are forced to wait around for a spawn. At least most games have fixed the majority of the problems with spawn camping (such as one player owning a unique spawn drop for hours, merely to sell the items on ebay), and with Anarchy Online's invention of instantiated dungeons (at least, I can't remember a game before AO that did this) groups of friends are guaranteed a dungeon-crawl uninterrupted by some other gang of nitwits stealing all their kills. I've yet to see a game be completely free of spawn camping, though (hmmm, except possibly A Tale in the Desert... unless you consider camp building, obelisk building and all the rest a form of spawn camping). Speaking of A Tale in the Desert, the tedium of crafting would be another aspect of MMOs that needs to be fixed. I'm pretty sure that crafting is the solution to a lot of other problems that MMOs face (mostly socialization related) -- but someone needs to figure out a way to make it as engaging as adventuring. ATitD did a lot to make theirs nifty, but I'm pretty sure it could be improved even more. And then there's player vs player combat. This thorny issue always seems to be a point of contention with players. The crux of it is that any system where player's avatars could differ in any way there will be balance issues. And even if your game designers are renowned gods of balance (such as the developers of Worlds of Warcraft are actually known for), there will be problems with balancing numbers of opponents. If it's possible for two players to gang up on one, it will happen, and often times at odds far more ill-favored than that. There's been some mention that WoW will use MOBs (4) and other tricks to balance out uneven battles, and, again, time will tell if this is true, or if it works. Ideally you'd want a system where every player, regardless of level, could participate in combat and feel helpful... yet those of higher levels would feel like the time they've put into leveling gave them some advantage... and where no matter what the balance on the playing field was, the combat would always be intense, with victory always possible (5). Finally there's always the little things that could stand improvement. I think in the next 10 years we'll see some sort of fundamental redesign in the way we chat in game (and I don't think it'll just be using microphones and speakers). Something will be done about the time it takes to get to where the fun is happening in massively large games, yet keep travel significant for the exploration of new lands. And more and more games will actually take advantage of the 3rd dimension in their games, allowing players to move about vertically in a sensible manner, and take advantage of that third dimension (nods given to Planetside and Endless Ages).
So that's a short list of things I could think of that need to be improved in the current crop of MMOs.
1) This is a rather important question as it turns out that the MMO fanbase is rather more static than the publishers wished it to be -- the opening of games like Star Wars Galaxies was supposed to infuse the industry with thousands of non-MMO players... but it turns out that the majority of SWG players were just MMO players from other games looking for something new. We'll have to wait to see if other genre breaching games like City of Heroes, Middle Earth Online and Matrix Online will continue this trend or not. The reason we need to know what problems players are facing in the current generation is that it will be games that address these problems that will have the large fanbases in the next generation of MMOs. 2) I'll only be listing the problems, not the solutions. Cheap, yeah, but it's not like you're paying me. :) 3) "con" - a way in MMOs for players to tell the relative difficulty of enemies they're considering fighting. Usually these are color coded, with purple monsters being very hard to kill. "I can't kill that, he's too purple for me." 4) MOB - originally "Mobile Object", it's a way of refering to all the animated monsters, guards, NPCs, and whatnot that you'll find wandering around MMOs. 5) Victory of some measure, possibly pyrric or simply a delaying tactic, if facing overwhelming odds... |