Frankendee’s Platonic MMO.
So Siha over at crewskills.net has an interesting post on designing your ultimate “Frankenstein’s game”. That is:
Imagine you could create your ideal, perfect, play-this-forever MMORPG, but it had to be constructed out of elements from pre-existing MMO games. So you could take, say, the player economy from EVE and the setting from LotRO and the graphics from EQ2 and the PvP from Warhammer Online. Or what have you.
What would you pick? What would be your ideal MMO, within these caveats?
Ooh! Sounds fun; let’s play!
Class and levelling design
I’m going to have to nominate pre-F2P Champions Online (or the “gold” archetypes or whatever they’re now called) system for this one. Basically imagine a RIFT-esque system but without even the limitation of classes, where skills can be bought either by having x number of pre-requisite points in that tree or by having x+y number of points overall.
Why do I like it? Basically because I’m a mostly-solo player who loves hybrid utility. Strict role-based classes are, I think, an artefact of the DnD/EQ days where soloing wasn’t part of the core gameplay. Unfortunately the focus on 1-vs-1 or small-group PvP in MMOs has had a tendency to keep them in, since they’re easier for devs to “balance” (read: for 1-vs-1 PvP).
I like freeform progression systems because they give players better freedom to design the sorts of characters that fit with their play style, rather than forcing them into specific roles formed from the perceptions of others (think the Druid who wants to DPS, but is invariably forced into healing). Of course, it’s easy to gimp yourself with freeform, meaning that there needs to be some kind of flexible “recovery” system; either time-based (a la EVE where “speccing wrong” mostly just means taking the time to re-train) or money-based (CO respecs).
Actually, flexibility to TheoryCraft and make mistakes is probably the core component of my “perfect” levelling system. I’m not a fan of games that make you live with every mistake you’ve ever made, partly because that tends to be indicative of a something with no active development (just imagine if WoW, with all the changes it’s made since release, didn’t allow respeccing) but mostly because it results in cookie-cutter builds. You think WoW or RIFT are bad for that? Then obviously you’ve never played something — mine was Ragnarok Online — where there are literally only a handful of viable specs per class,[i] despite there being thousands of possible specs. Now imagine trying to luck into one of those playable specs as a newbie.
Yeah. Not fun.
Flexibility and user-customisation are the name of the game on this one. As to how it’s achieved mechanically…
Some of you may remember I come from a White Wolf tabletop background rather than a DnD-based one. This probably explains my disdain for strict class differentiation — WW games don’t have it per se, at least not in the way DnD does — and it’s also indicative of the fact I’m a bit ho-hum over level-based advancement. I like the idea of having skills you level through use (IIRC, Saga of Ryzom does this) or, slightly more abstracted, buy directly via experience. So I’m quite interested in things like the EVE/Glitch skill system (skills are bought directly, with “time” in place of XP). I haven’t played much AoC, but I believe that game has something similar with its “Alternate Advancement”.
At any rate, my Platonic MMO would definitely be ditching the dings and the levels for something more along these lines.[ii]
Questing system
Let’s face it, there’s really only one player in this town and it’s World of Warcraft. Even single-player games like Dragon Age 2 and Fallout 3 have, at their heart, functionally the same questing system as WoW, albeit abstracted somewhat; DA2 might have your quest objective as “blow up the Chantry” but mechanically the quest is still “kill 10 templars”.[iii]
That’s not to say I think WoW’s quests are perfect — if nothing else, they could certainly do with a bit more of the aforementioned abstractions — only that I’m not sure what a questing system would look like, if not this.
PvP
Firstly: Not only do I not like 1-vs-1/Arena-style PvP but I actively don’t think it should be part of the MMO genre. This stuff is what MOBAs were invented for, so if you want that sort of gameplay, go play one of those instead.
Secondly: I don’t like Open World PvP. It’s fine if that’s your thing, it just isn’t mine. Let me hang out on my PvE server and you can keep your PvP rule set to yourself. What can I say? I’m allergic to ganking and am the wrong gender to have an e-peen, so this stuff just doesn’t excite me. (Actually, from what I’ve heard, the lack of open world PvP on so-called “PvP” servers is somewhat indicative that it doesn’t particularly excite PvP players, either.)
That being said, there’s one type of PvP I love and that’s lobby-based battlegrounds; the more objective-focused the better. Old-style multi-day AVs are perfect, and their modern-day zerg-rush equivalents aren’t too bad either (yeah, I went there).
The point of lobby-based PvP is that the team are normalised somewhat: Fixed team numbers, level brackets, buffing up disadvantaged members or teams. That sort of thing. Getting ganked over and over by players you have no hope of beating, who you know are only harassing you because they take active pleasure in your impotent misery, is not fun (and also kinda makes me despair for humanity). Tearing through a battlefield because your team understands strategy and cooperation, however? Yeah. I’ll take me some of that.
Crafting
As we’ve already established, I pretty much don’t care about crafting in games so… honestly I have no opinion on this one. Which isn’t to say I want no system, only that I have no preference for what, exactly, that is…
Achievements
This one would have to be Lord of the Rings Online. I’d be lying if I said I played a great deal of that game, but I did enjoy the Deed (I think it was) system whereby the game encouraged you to do things you normally might not — be they grinding goblins or delivering pies — in order get tangible character benefits. WoW-style “you did this, now have a popup” achievement systems I can take or leave; I don’t dislike them, but I don’t really see the point in most cases.
I guess there’s really two ideas at play here: One is a kind of “character journal” that records things you’ve done, important milestones and whatnot; the other is sort of an extension of the quest/levelling system. Both are okay, but in my Perfect Game they’d be separated out in some more logical fashion I haven’t really thought of yet and don’t have a real-world example for. (Yeah yeah that’s bending the rules; so shoot me…)
Travel
Two requirements: A taxi service, and some kind of player-directed flight. Yes I love flying mounts, no they don’t “ruin immersion”[iv] and — as we’ve already discovered — I don’t care about world PvP and play on PvE servers anyway.[v]
Speed-boost powers/mounts are a must, even starting from relatively low levels. Yeah, the world is epic, but running across it forty times at foot-pace is just tedious. Besides, if your world design is actually engaging and beautiful I’m going to get off my mount and walk around it anyway; q.v. Grizzly Hills, which I still think is one of the most subtly beautiful game zones ever designed. One of the things that really killed Aion for me was just how hideously ugly and bland the world was.[vi] One of the things I’m most looking forward to in TOR is being able to explore the stunning scenery in 30″ high-def rather than pixel-crufted YouTube res.
The one thing I absolutely don’t want, on the other hand, is Forsaken/Perfect World-style “auto-route to quest location” functionality. On the surface of it this seems like exactly the sort of thing I should enjoy. It isn’t. You want to talk about something “immersion breaking”? Couple this with unengaging next-next-next quest “text” and there you have it.
Wardrobes/cosmetic gear
I’m in two minds to this. My first one is typified by games like Co* and CO where avatar appearance is completely decoupled from gear. My second is games that implement wardrobes a la LOtRO, AoC, RIFT and almost every F2P game ever. Either is fine, so long as I have the opportunity to look epic.[vii]
User interface
Honestly? I don’t care what the default user interface looks like or does, so long as I get a mod API a la WoW’s. I know it’s very trendy to whine about GearScore and DPS meters and whatnot, but the truth of it is I’m incredibly anal-retentive and love my screen to look just so. If that means Bartender4, Button Facade, Power Auras, X-Perl and IceHUD? So be it. Back in earlier iterations of the API I had an incredibly dynamic custom UI filled with pop-out mousover ability stacks — think like the Shaman totem stacks, except custom-defined — and a single “main bar” that reacted dynamically depending on whether I was targeting a hostile or an ally. Oh, those days![viii]
Other musts: Something like Auctioneer and something that auto-summons a random companion pet for me. Yeah, I’m both lazy and vain.
Concl– Wait. Aren’t we missing something?
It occurred to me, when I was writing this, that there was something missing from Siha’s original post. Something I’d been reading a lot about recently, so it was obviously critically important to some MMO players… but not important enough for Siha to notice its exclusion[ix] and not important enough to me personally to catch it right away (or any of the commenters on Siha’s post).
Have you got it yet? Go on: If you haven’t already spoiled yourself, re-read the list above and see if you can figure out what it is. I think it’s one of those things, like Petals Around the Rose, that’ll either be immediately obvious or confounding elusive. It’ll also, I think, say a lot about you as a gamer.
Got it? Give up?
Combat
Yeah. I know, right? Nothing at all about the combat system.
I’m pretty sure the only reason I picked this up as an exclusion is because it encompasses most of the Guild Wars 2 versus The Old Republic pundit battle currently going on in the MMOsphere. It’s probably neither a secret nor unfair to say TOR is basically WoW-with-voice-acting, but whether that sounds terrible or awful to you is probably determined almost solely by how much importance you place on combat as a game mechanic. For people like me to whom combat is… a thing that’s there (to put it mildly), WoW’s system is perfectly adequate. So BioWare-does-WoW sounds like pretty much the greatest thing ever. It’s really only the people who want some flavour of combat that doesn’t involve hotkeys and clicking that are predicting the game’s imminent demise.[x] These are the people who are practically salivating over GW2′s promised dynamic combat system. Yanno, the one that sounds like an entire game of tedious “don’t stand in the fire” mechanics to the rest of us.
The fact of the matter is I don’t really like twitch-based MMOs. Or, well, twitch-based games really. And, honestly? I could do without combat in an MMO all together.
Maybe.
I think.
Frankenstein and the Monster weren’t exactly BFFs…
So okay. My Platonic Ideal MMO is a non-combat, story-driven themepark game based on freeform progression, but in which crafting isn’t the major point. What the hell does it look like?
The fact of the matter is I don’t know. I’ve never seen it; most non-combat MMOs I can think of off the top of my head are sandboxes with a focus on crafting — the absolute purest incarnation of this form being, of course, Second Life – and honestly I can’t think of anything worse.
I think my game might look a little bit like Uru; Cyan Worlds’ ill-fated MMO based in the Myst universe. It probably looks a lot like oldskool puzzle adventure games a la Zork, or maybe a modern non-combat survival horror like Amnesia. It would definitely have one of my favourite game mechanics of all time, one I’ve only ever (personally) encountered in Return to Zork: Photography.[xi] Players would be able to take photos of things and places in the game, with their Photography skill influencing the quality of the shot and the uberness of the camera they can use. Most importantly, photos could be shown to NPCs and to other players to either trigger quest progression or to form the basis of group puzzles.
So say you know there’s Some Item in a particular location but your Investigation skill isn’t high enough to “reveal” it. But you’re pretty good with Photography, so you take some snapshots around the area and send them to your more investigative friend. She can look at the photos and have her Investigation skill trigger as if she were physically there herself (with a penalty ameliorated by your Photography skill plus a little randomness). The game gives her “sparklies” on the photo where the usable item is; she can mark it out and send the marked photos back to you. You can check out her notes and get a bonus to your own Investigation (based on hers, of course) which — if all is well — will reveal the item in question to you at its original location. You can then grab them item, take it back to a quest NPC, and weasel you way through the subsequent dialogue sequence with your Persuasion.
That’s what my Platonic MMO would look like, I think. It’s about puzzles and it’s about dialogue and it’s about exploration.
It also doesn’t exist. At all, as far as I’m aware. I’m not even sure if it can exist; it’s so out there and, potentially, so niche that it’s doubtful any development studio would even attempt to take something like this on.[xii] And — as per the moral of Frankenstein itself — maybe, ultimately, I wouldn’t even want it if they did.
Maybe. Maybe not.
But, in the meantime, I’ll take TOR. A little story is better than nothing.
- Yeah, that’s “viable” not “optimal”. A non-viable spec in RO wasn’t just “a bit worse” than a viable one; it was actively unplayable. ↩
- Yeah yeah content normalisation yeah yeah. It’s a Platonic ideal, all right? That means it’s allowed to be unrealistically perfect! ↩
- Legacy is probably the best example of this. Behind all the pretty voice acting it’s still essentially a quest chain of “kill 20 dwarves”, “kill 1 boss”, “kill 50 Darkspawn”, “kill 1 elite”. ↩
- I always find it telling, incidentally, that every. Single. Person who argues against flying mounts still, yanno, actually uses them. Also “it runs immersion” is like MMO Godwin’s. Stop it. ↩
- Actually, in my Platonic MMO flying mounts would be banned on PvP servers; there, problem fixed. Enjoy your world PvP. ↩
- Honestly, I have a similar problem with RIFT. It’s very pretty just… sort of dull and a bit soulless. ↩
- Fun fact: If I’m being totally honest, I’ve always chased epic looking gear more so than, well, epic gear. I didn’t used to get heartbreakingly envious over The Elements because it was a blue with “leet stats”. I got envious because it looked fucking awesome. This is always the core of my gripe with WoW “epics”; I don’t care about the purples per se, and I think I’m not alone. Give “casuals” a way to grind blue gear with identical, colour-shifted models as the raid sets and I guarantee there’ll be a whole lot less whinging… Well, from the non-raiders, at any rate. ↩
- Seriously I should try to dig out some screenshots. That thing was epic. ↩
- I’m assuming she didn’t leave it out on purpose, of course. ↩
- TOR might very well still fail but, to be perfectly honest, it’s going to fail by not delivering the afore-promised “Fourth Pillar” storytelling, not because it uses 1-= hotkeys. Some of the leaks from permanent beta indicate this may be a concern — like AoC, all the quality story content apparently is stacked towards TOR’s beginning, thinning out in later levels — but the people complaining about this tend to also be the people who are most critical of its combat as well, so who knows. ↩
- I believe Glitch has something similar, but I’ve only just trained it and haven’t used it yet in-game, so couldn’t tell you. ↩
- Though, yanno. If you want to… ↩