Let's build an MMO.

[DrSpike]

Is that before or after errand boy?

[flash9286]

You should make a MMO about the greek city states. Thebes, naturally, would be full of teddy bear avatars.

[Jon Shafer]

Originally posted by Nostromo
Some examples come to mind: the Sims, Rainbow six Vegas, Call of Duty, etc, etc. It doesn't have to be ****ing fantasy, for God's sake. I'm sick and tired of mother****in' elves and those damn freaks with hairy feet, but the average moron who's into computer RPG's never seem to get tired of that ****...

Games like Rainbow Six and Call of Duty 4 are set in the modern day, but they're not really about living the modern day world. The primary focus of those games is shooting people, either online or in a pre-scripted campaign. The setting is secondary to their very focused set of gameplay mechanics. The only game which has ever had success mimicking real life, as you point out, is the Sims, and it's a very unique example. Some people don't even consider it a game as much as a virtual dollhouse. That certainly doesn't sound like it's the direction FrostyBoy is moving in with his idea, although I could be wrong.

Anyways, my point is that trying to make "living real life in the present time" into a fun game is going to be much harder than figuring out how to make a big dude with armor and a sword in a fantasy setting fun.

Jon

[Jon Shafer]

Originally posted by FrostyBoy
Of couse, "Erands boy" is not something fun to do, unless perhaps its funny or for short bursts of time. However, I was playing AoC lastnight and I wondered to myself, who the hell thought that grinding would be fun? Yet millions of people bother to do it?

Grinding "works" in MMOs for a couple reasons. First, it's always based on combat. Players are more willing to put up with repeated battles just to flex their muscle and defeat foes (see old JRPGs for some of the best/worst examples). The other enticement is that of immediate reward... I get more XP and cool loot. If not for that, then it's very unlikely anyone would put up with the grinding you see in current MMOs. For many players it's not fun, but it has worked in the past. If you're able to come up with something "grind-y" that doesn't involve combat and loot, but is still successful, I'd like to see it.

Grinding is also important to fill time. The key aspect of an MMO is that it's always there, it never ends. Which means you need some gameplay feature that is always there and never ends also. If you're playing WoW or AoC, what else are you going to do besides fight? Thus, the combat grind was born. Very few MMOs have had success without this component. Doesn't mean it can't be done, but you have to be very, very explicit in what will take it's place.

Thanks for your input Jon, I agree with you that real life is boring, no one wants to play it, but what I have found when playing games is that people want to feel important, or they want to play a role they could not normaly play in real life. The game I am proposing would allow a single person to raise up to President level (for example), and actually carry out Presidential tasks, like declaring war on another zone, so all players would suddenly be affected by that change in rule.

Like I said, I think it can be done, it just needs a team of thinkers to set it right, to make it fun, but not to go down the path of fantasy. I mean we all play Civilization right, which is based on real-life, why did we all play it? To take on the role of a leader? Maybe it's due time to take Civilization to a higher level, where we all contribute in our own personal ways, yet, our actions all effect each other. For example, I might like to play as an Assassin, in the game I am known as the Jackal, you might prefer to be a business man trading cocaine, an illegal trade in most of the zones (set by the leaders (players) of those zones), you have competition you want wiped out, you call me, I arrive at your office, you tell me in secret you will pay me an amount of money to kill a certain business man (player). So I go out, I travel over seas, I try my best to kill this other player, I succeed, and in doing so, people hear about it and his reptutation drops, and your business goes up. In fear, you hire bodyguards (which could be other players or NPC's) to protect yourself from assassin's as well. And this is just one kind of scenario, that is fun and effects many players at once. In most MMO's, this sort of thing never happens, everything is feature-based (Each player is individually effected by the pre-set features), the game I am proposing is player-based (Players are effected by the actions of the other players, and the world of the MMO changes depending on what the players do).

The most important thing to keep in mind is that the game has to be fun always. People don't want to "level up" to President and then get to do the fun stuff. Not everyone is going to be President. Honestly, the most fun part of the game should be the very beginning! That's when you want everyone to get really excited about getting to play and see more of the world. If you start as something lame with the enticement of becoming cool one day then that's not going to be enough for most players. And I don't blame them. When I sit down to play a game I want to be getting the good stuff right away. I don't want to have to play for 10 or 20 or in the case of some MMOs over 100 hours before I get to the "real" game!

That is the biggest reason why any "real life" game is going to run into serious challenges. Most of real life isn't cool, so you can't have everyone doing cool things in a real life MMO if it's going to be at all accurate. There's just no way you can have thousands or millions of Presidents. Which is exactly why Civilization does work... because everyone is the king. As designers, we can ensure that players are always doing the most fun thing possible.

What I'd recommend is to try and focus down more. As I said, you need to make the very beginning of the game the most fun out of everything. Most everyday roles just aren't going to fit that. If everyone starts as something interesting like an assassin or a soldier or a spy or something then that changes things. It also makes it distinctly less like real life. But no matter what, you always have to remember to keep the fun first. That's what makes it a game and not a simulation.

Jon

[FrostyBoy]

Right, well I have been pounding my mind for the last week trying to figure out how the beginning-game will work. I don't want people starting off stacking shelves at a supermarket for some coin, it's funny, but it's only funny once and for a minute or so.

The beginning of the game will have to focus on the introduction of yourself and the world around you, and I don't think that can be done without the help of pre-set missions and many NPC's, and it won't be until you have reached a certain level where you will start to take instructions from other players of higher level - at which point I would hope that the MMO game drives itself (as in, most of the missions are actually given by other players), of course, there will still be NPC's here and there that have their own requests, most of which are required in order to progress up the ladder.

The game would also have to be designed in such a way, that a high level businessman, can not progress any further without being forced to ask lower level players to work for him, in whatever manner he has.

Businessman of level 47, owner of a warehouse of goods. Needs someone to deliver Y goods to Z location. He posts the job (some central place where people searching for jobs can go to see all the available jobs in the area), the Businessman will reward the player with X amount of money and some skill or experience points. You, a low level player who just got his drivers license, likes the reward, you take the job. So you head to his store, take the truck and deliver the goods, mission completed, you get the money and points; or, you failed, businessman learns of it, bans you from working for him again; you have trouble getting a job, you turn to crime and on one fine day as a level 50 leader of a mob, steal that businessmans goods and sell it on the blackmarket.

This kind of player built mission, creates interesting scenario's and paths for players. The game would require some sort of mission-builder that the server can recognize and understand. Every mission would have to be categorized, e.g. Delivery, Assassinate, Steal, Investigate, etc.

Here's another mission example, a leader of a gang located in England hears of diamond discovery in the Australian deserts; not wanting to draw attention, he sends you, a low level, with some exploration experience, out to Australia to investigate. Now, as a new player who just started, who has probably only travelled around England and maybe France, as travelling anywhere far is not an easy task, but as a new player, he might be quite excited to travel so far away, and find this diamond mine; he has to figure out a way as to how he is going to get there, perhaps he will hitchhike all the way to Singapore, and take a boat from there to Darwin, and from Darwin out into the outbacks of the desert, which you must prepare for, you don't want to be travelling out into the hot desert without water supply and food, and perhaps it would be advisable to ask other players around Darwin of a Diamond mine, maybe they know roughly where it is, or perhaps there is a guide there, another player, has been there before and is willing to take you there for some money/skill, or whatever you have to offer. (and to encourage this kind of role-playing chat, the common zoned chat rooms of MMO's would have to be unavailable in this game, as it would just make things too easy.) You investigate, recieve your award and skill points. You return to England, talk to the boss, he's happy with you, he asks you to join his gang permanantly, you do, your title has raised and your pay is better. The player behind the boss is happy because he's roleplaying the character of a leader, instructing people to do his bidding, because he has plans, but he can't do it himself, he has to ask other people to help him, sometimes he succeeds (In which case he would recieve a lot of satisfaction), sometimes he fails, (in which case he gets angry at those who failed him and maybe does something nasty).

And in a game like this, people's names are remembered, people will remember that guy named Joe101, the leader of a large gang in Los Angeles making the most money out of majiuana. Some people want to be in his gang, others want to destroy his business. Or perhaps the Governor (President) of Alberta, whose name is MrSnuggles; people remember him because he's always being an *******, turning the zone of Alberta into a crime ridden, army-driven, police-zone, making life hard there. Some fear him and do as he says, others want him removed from office, whereby other Governors of nearby (and perhaps far off ones too) zones devise plans together to actually do that. MrSnuggles learns of it, gets scared, doesn't want to humble himself, increases his army and maybe war breaks out. Players learn of this war, and know it as a hotzone, don't go there, or risk getting yourself killed.

[FrostyBoy]

Btw, some may be wondering how can there be a leader of a zone if he is not always online? Well my solution is a few-fold:

In order to become leader of a zone, you must first have your own guild/gang/team of at least 20 or whatever number of people, these people must consist of at least one General, and perhaps some other titles. If the leader is not online, the General is next in charge, if neither are online, the next person down the line is in charge. If none of them are online for an extended period of time, then the zone falls into Anarchy and the seat for leadership becomes up for grabs to those who meet the requirements. So if you were a good leader, you would employ many people, and put the power to the people you trust, and maybe teach them how to run the zone.

[snoopy369]

First off - reread what Jon said, then reread it again. It's very true (and written by someone who should know...), and it's something a lot of game designers get horribly wrong. Before ANYTHING else, think of a fun game. Everything else should be secondary.

Originally posted by FrostyBoy
The beginning of the game will have to focus on the introduction of yourself and the world around you

No. The beginning of the game should focus on introduction to the game. No MMO i've ever seen starts you in the full world to start with; and for a very good reason. You need to start in newbie-island (at least as your first character), because you need to learn how the game works. You need to introduce people to the game mechanics, to the types of missions they'll be doing, etc., in a controlled and less competitive location (particularly, it should be hard or impossible to die). The world can come later.

This is where the 'vertical slice' comes in handy, actually - your 'newbie island' should be sort of an extended vertical slice of the game. (This makes it a good thing to make as your game teaser - make a bit of newbie island that shows you the entire gameplay.) Either way, you need to focus on HOW you play the game, not where.

The game would also have to be designed in such a way, that a high level businessman, can not progress any further without being forced to ask lower level players to work for him, in whatever manner he has.

Can you imagine this being fun? You play a lot of MMOs if I remember correctly. What's the most annoying thing to an experienced player... right, a n00b. You're going to make him play with newer players? Right... he'll just end up with other low level characters that are secondary characters of his alliance or whatever.

This kind of player built mission, creates interesting scenario's and paths for players. The game would require some sort of mission-builder that the server can recognize and understand. Every mission would have to be categorized, e.g. Delivery, Assassinate, Steal, Investigate, etc.

Are you sure you want to build an MMO? This certainly is interesting, as NWN was largely for this reason; but I think that lends itself better to smaller MP situations than MMO. But I could be wrong, and it's certainly worth finding out Also don't remember that if you have an overriding gameplay mechanic, like having lower level users play with higher level ones, you'll have to figure out some way to make that work with the creator - ie, force people to create missions that work this way - otherwise people will try to work around it as much as possible.

That's perhaps the biggest problem with an MMO with player created missions - because of persistent characters, people will try to do things like make easy missions that give huge rewards, etc., to boost their character faster. Preventing this seems very difficult...

[Jon Miller]

You could go with being the controller of a business, rather than start as an errand boy and become president. This allows everyone to be king, but makes it so that you can have 100k+ subscribers and still be reasonable.

And business like games have sold before. However, it is a much more niche audience than kill stuff games.

JM

[FrostyBoy]

Originally posted by snoopy369
First off - reread what Jon said, then reread it again. It's very true (and written by someone who should know...), and it's something a lot of game designers get horribly wrong. Before ANYTHING else, think of a fun game. Everything else should be secondary.


No. The beginning of the game should focus on introduction to the game. No MMO i've ever seen starts you in the full world to start with; and for a very good reason. You need to start in newbie-island (at least as your first character), because you need to learn how the game works. You need to introduce people to the game mechanics, to the types of missions they'll be doing, etc., in a controlled and less competitive location (particularly, it should be hard or impossible to die). The world can come later.

This is where the 'vertical slice' comes in handy, actually - your 'newbie island' should be sort of an extended vertical slice of the game. (This makes it a good thing to make as your game teaser - make a bit of newbie island that shows you the entire gameplay.) Either way, you need to focus on HOW you play the game, not where.




Can you imagine this being fun? You play a lot of MMOs if I remember correctly. What's the most annoying thing to an experienced player... right, a n00b. You're going to make him play with newer players? Right... he'll just end up with other low level characters that are secondary characters of his alliance or whatever.


Are you sure you want to build an MMO? This certainly is interesting, as NWN was largely for this reason; but I think that lends itself better to smaller MP situations than MMO. But I could be wrong, and it's certainly worth finding out Also don't remember that if you have an overriding gameplay mechanic, like having lower level users play with higher level ones, you'll have to figure out some way to make that work with the creator - ie, force people to create missions that work this way - otherwise people will try to work around it as much as possible.

That's perhaps the biggest problem with an MMO with player created missions - because of persistent characters, people will try to do things like make easy missions that give huge rewards, etc., to boost their character faster. Preventing this seems very difficult...

I hear you, and those same issues have crossed my mind.

One solution is to make it cheaper to use lower level people, and just because they don't have the skill points doesn't mean they can't get the job done right? If you can find players that are good, but are still low level, then lucky for you, you know good people that are cheap, but will unfortunately rise the ranks quickly, becoming expensive.

[Lord_Icewind]

I think it's a rather good idea; problem is, nowadays it just can't be done.
Imagine how many people would have to play at the same time in order for the game to work; WoW servers are small in comparison.
You could try the Eve idea (each zone a different server), and make each "Earth" a giga-server...but it still would need ****loads of money in order to work properly.

And how much money is available to do this, anyway?

[FrostyBoy]

I think Ubisoft are pretty wealthy.

[Lord_Icewind]

Ubisoft...uhm...
I've never really got to like 'em (too many bad games), but some of them do save their arses from complete banishment from my PC (like HOMM V).

Anyway, if Ubi is really behind this (being a big company and all that) I wish you all the good luck in the world.

You'll need it.