Green Monster Games (Curt Schilling)

[Ngruk]

Question.

To anyone that has played more than one MMO or has played one MMO for a few years.

If you knew an MMO was coming out in a genre you were interested in, what would be the following:

1) The one core basic feature would you 100% expect to be in, and expect to be perfected at launch, bug free and 'cool'
2) What one thing that hasn't been done well, or at all, in any MMO, would you most like to see as a thoroughly fleshed out mechanic/content piece/UI feature?

[Kuro]

One thing that consistently boggles my mind in new MMOs is that their chat/channel functionalities are inferior to EQ1's. You'd think "next generation" games in a sphere where social interaction is, ostensibly (although with the huge focus on solosolosolo in new games, meh), a key function, would have improved on, or at least have cribbed, an 8-9 year old game's system (although that's not entirely fair, the current channel system is only 4ish years old).

Also, LFG tools that don't blow goats are good.

[Azrayne]

1) The one core basic feature would you 100% expect to be in, and expect to be perfected at launch, bug free and 'cool'

Not so much a particular feature, but a smooth, consistant and well itemized levelling experience. Nothing turns me off a new MMO more than content gaps and ridiculous itemization that's obviously had absolutely no thought put into it. The moment I hit the 'oh damn, I'm out of quests, looks like I'm going to have to go grind a bunch of levels' is usually the moment I return to my previous game. Likewise, if the zone design and itemization reeks of rushed developement, it turns me off a game really fast. Make it as easy as possible for people to want to keep playing.

2) What one thing that hasn't been done well, or at all, in any MMO, would you most like to see as a thoroughly fleshed out mechanic/content piece/UI feature?

Non-itemized character progression. Don't get me wrong I love my phat loot and all, but items always seem rather transient to me and I like the thought that the effort I've put into my character is more than the sum of his gear, which will all eventually be replaced anyway.

Of course the hard part with that is that it's very tricky to balance. There's a careful line to walk between making it impossible for new players to catch up and making such a progression system meaningless.

For an example of a company who did it very, very well, look at Mythic's Realm Rank system in DAoC. I think they struck an almost perfect balance here, it meant something to have a high RR character, it was something that took a long playtime and was rewarded accordingly, but it was very possible for a new character to catch up to a competative level within a reasonable time frame. Of course the older player would always be slightly ahead assuming equal playtimes, but because of the way they scaled it you could become competative quite easily.

In the time it might take someone to go from RR9 to RR10 another player would be able to go from RR 1 to RR7 or so, which would leave them able to play at a decent level. Likewise, they balanced the rewards fairly well. A RR10 had an advantage, but not so much of one that a well played RR5 couldn'tstand a fair chance against them.

The trick in applying this to a PvE game would be only gaining progression from meaningful content, so you don't see players grinding solo or in small groups 10 hours a day just to keep up.

Ok I'm kind of rambling on.

[Tyen]

1) The one core basic feature would you 100% expect to be in, and expect to be perfected at launch, bug free and 'cool'

The combat/abilities/spells mechanic MUST be perfected and bug free.

2) What one thing that hasn't been done well, or at all, in any MMO, would you most like to see as a thoroughly fleshed out mechanic/content piece/UI feature?

I don't even feel confident enough in any company to say "Combat must be 100% balanced" because I could never picture that happening in my lifetime. It's tough work.

I want to play a class that caters to my own personal traits. Whether it be heavy damage, tanking, crowd control, or utility; I don't want to have to figure out which classes are strong and then which of those strong classes fits my certain play style. I hate trying to figure out which classes are strong in order for myself to be useful to others whilst emerging myself into a class that I enjoy.

If all classes were 100% balanced then I can better chose for myself, and my characteristics instead of worrying about who is gimped to hell and who is the most powerful class of them all.

[kudos]

Originally Posted by Ngruk

Question.

To anyone that has played more than one MMO or has played one MMO for a few years.

If you knew an MMO was coming out in a genre you were interested in, what would be the following:

1) The one core basic feature would you 100% expect to be in, and expect to be perfected at launch, bug free and 'cool'
2) What one thing that hasn't been done well, or at all, in any MMO, would you most like to see as a thoroughly fleshed out mechanic/content piece/UI feature?

How about a working LFG system? EQ had the best one I can think of. Just copy it.

Less trash clearing for raids and more boss fights. Think Blackwing Lair.

[Tyen]

Originally Posted by kudos

How about a working LFG system? EQ had the best one I can think of. Just copy it.

These are MUST commands for every single MMO.

/who all LFG
/who LFG
/who all LFG 50 60
/who all enchanter LFG
/who 50 60
/who all druid 30 50

[Grave]

Originally Posted by Ngruk

1) The one core basic feature would you 100% expect to be in, and expect to be perfected at launch, bug free and 'cool'

The questing/leveling experience. Make it engaging, make it fun and it will buy you time to tweak other aspects of the game while people simply enjoy leveling up. It needs to flow well and properly reward the player along the way. WoW's leveling experience is often praised, but if you look at it critically there are numerous flaws. Itemization is a big one, it's very rare to get an item from a quest that you actually want or even care about. It would be nice if quests felt more rewarding.

I would also like to see fewer "meaningless" quests, and more excitement at all levels of play. I don't want to feel like I'm only questing to level, it would be nice if I didn't even think about it as I played. Rather than having 20 dull quests like gathering apples and wolf hides, why not start out with ONE quest that leads the player through 20 different steps, culminating in something that feels epic (even at level 5) and rewards them properly along the way. The end result - gaining level 5 - is the same, but the path to get there would be much more fun.

From the very beginning, I want to feel like the main character in a grand story. I don't want to be an errand boy doing menial tasks for NPCs. I want to make my own choices and reap the rewards or suffer the consequences. I'd like to see quests presented in different ways as well. If I start killing skeleton warlords and there's a quest in town to kill 10 of them that I didn't pick up, the game should just recognize that I'm doing it and allow me to get the reward for it later. Check out more of my thoughts on questing in this post on my blog, if you like.

Originally Posted by Ngruk

2) What one thing that hasn't been done well, or at all, in any MMO, would you most like to see as a thoroughly fleshed out mechanic/content piece/UI feature?

I'm going to go with alignment and reputation on this one. EQ1 did it best, imo, by allowing players to raise or lower their faction with pretty much anyone. You also had semi-alignments in EQ based on your deity. This type of thing could easily be fleshed out and perfected, with the flaws in the design corrected along the way.

I'd like to see an MMO where a player's alignment actually had an effect on their character, altering what quests they can receive as well as how they might complete them. Think KOTOR, Fable, or Neverwinter Nights in the sense that you can do some quests in different ways and your choice effects your alignment. Sometimes, even the way you speak to an NPC can effect your alignment slightly. When you find a valuable family heirloom in a dungeon, do you return it to the rightful owner, keep it for yourself, or sell it to the highest bidder? The player should have these choices and what they do should effect their character.

Similarly, I want a good, diverse reputation system. One of the coolest things about Velious was choosing which of the three factions you wanted to ally yourself with, and being able to switch those factions at will. I want to see more choices like this.

Give us factions that are less black and white, so obviously good or evil. Let the player decide if they really believe in that factions goals and want to help them or if they'd rather stand against them.

Let the player customize their character in the way they choose to act and which factions they align themselves with. An ogre should be able to walk in the city of the elves if he has proven himself to them.

This kind of thing is part of what made EQ feel like a real world and not just a game.

[Northerner]

Originally Posted by Tyen

These are MUST commands for every single MMO.

/who all LFG
/who LFG
/who all LFG 50 60
/who all enchanter LFG
/who 50 60
/who all druid 30 50

That is a design decision (or has been for WoW and others recently) and I could not agree more that the recent decisions have caused more harm than good. I want to be able to be selective and damned if not allowing the option really encourages me to take what is there. I'd also add as musts:

/who all guildname

... and if we want to be modern about things:

/who [modifiers] x [distance units] [race] [class] [flags like pvp, on-quest, level, spec and anything SQL can handle and your user can think of]

Hell boys, replicate and modernize EQ's /LFG window and you'd be golden. The main thing is that so much of this could be packaged as 'standard' Db tools for MMOs and for some reason has not been. New releases over and over tend to re-invent the wheel and that is so damned inefficient. Perhaps it is just insular competition, I don't know.

Regardless, do that, do %x stuff for chat, actually put in a few hundred /emotes and you will fix a huge chunk of the problems that even new releases are plagued by. Remember, it is all about user experience in the end and so much of polish is shit like this. To this day I find it jarring when playing non-WoW to get nothing from /sit or meaningless results from /who ...

WAR's /lfg tool is decent. It's map and quest systems work well and it's interface customization is excellent. Hell, it's BGs are by and large very fun too. Still, I miss some odd things and am stunned when a simple slash-command just is not there at all.

[Stosh]

Originally Posted by Genjiro

I'm with Zehn on this one regarding "hardcore guilds will require xxx" nonsense. I've played in some pretty hardcore guilds, and even led one. In general, I think most of your top hardcore guilds look for just a couple things.

1. Show up with good attendance, know how to play your class
2. Don't cause drama

Pretty much, every guild I was in, led, been around, or knew others who led successful guilds....this was pretty much it.

This.

MMO's are no different than anything else in life. If you can get a collection of capable people, willing to put aside all their personal issues and dedicate themselves to a common goal you can accomplish things.

[huan]

Originally Posted by Ngruk

1) The one core basic feature would you 100% expect to be in, and expect to be perfected at launch, bug free and 'cool'

Smooth, responsive movement and combat. Why is WoW the only game that really has managed to pull this off? WAR could be so amazing if it wasn't for the terrible combat system.

Originally Posted by Ngruk

2) What one thing that hasn't been done well, or at all, in any MMO, would you most like to see as a thoroughly fleshed out mechanic/content piece/UI feature?

Free monthly content patches, ala Asheron's Call. I loved that crap. None of this milking shallow content for 2+ years like Blizzard is pulling.

[JerleMinara]

Originally Posted by Ngruk

1) The one core basic feature would you 100% expect to be in, and expect to be perfected at launch, bug free and 'cool'

I don't really have any one feature, but I will speak to my thoughts on what a next gen MMO needs to do:

Steal everything good from other games.

Look at EQ for things they did right (quite a few): Their chat system is far, far more advanced than any other game that's been released and it's an ancient product. Serverwide channels are amazing and build communities.

Likewise steal their LFG system, and Anon please. I don't want to show up in who.

Bring back Epic class quests that involve the hardest dungeons in each expansion. Progressive levels of gear at each stage that weaves a coherent narrative and gives you a very, very good item. Let it grow t1-t2-t3 depending on your ability to raid each successive level of content.

Look at Vanguard for some class design things. They did stuff well(Blood Mages are money as fuck, and Bards are fundamentally neat).

Look at LOTRO and steal their titles. Seriously. Titles get people excited and keep them busy experiencing old content. Generic titles, epic titles

Look at WoW and take their User Experience and duplicate it. Allow the same level of UI functionality and customisation. WoW's arguably greatest impact on the MMO landscape will be the legacy of its addons: they've fundamentally altered the nature of the game and in a very good way. It puts the power in the player's hands, and gets them involved intimately in shaping their gameplay experience. Item links, auction house, flight masters, etc. Take it.

Most importantly, steal these things effectively. Don't half ass it. War's UI is an abomination because they started to copy WoW's UI and got bored about half way through. It's unrepentant shit and that doesn't fly. There's still been no push for the level of control and flexibility the EQ chat system allowed, or their LFG commands.

Additionally, look to the future. Things like Wardb, Wowarmory, this is the shape of things to come. "Web 2.0" is a shitty buzzword but it's applicable in this case.. Build that integration between game and web. Let people do messaging from AIM into your playerbase, work with AOL or yahoo to integrate. Consider a facebook app, work on the social networking angle. Word of mouth is key and building that player buzz and allowing people to show off is huge.

95% of playing an MMO is about having a chance to wave your dick around. Focus on giving people opportunities to do that and you'll have a successful game. There's a reason shoulderpads get bigger and bigger.

[Stosh]

Originally Posted by Ngruk

Question.

To anyone that has played more than one MMO or has played one MMO for a few years.

If you knew an MMO was coming out in a genre you were interested in, what would be the following:

1) The one core basic feature would you 100% expect to be in, and expect to be perfected at launch, bug free and 'cool'
2) What one thing that hasn't been done well, or at all, in any MMO, would you most like to see as a thoroughly fleshed out mechanic/content piece/UI feature?

1) Without question, the combat system. The majority of the time you will spend in the game will be while you are in combat. The combat system needs to be intuitive enough for new players to quickly grasp the system, complex enough to allow the skills of expert players to be displayed and fun enough to stand the test of time.

2) A reputation/diplomacy system that involves more than just killing X amount of mobs or repeating the same quests over and over.

[Gnome Eater]

Originally Posted by Ngruk

Question.

To anyone that has played more than one MMO or has played one MMO for a few years.

If you knew an MMO was coming out in a genre you were interested in, what would be the following:

1) The one core basic feature would you 100% expect to be in, and expect to be perfected at launch, bug free and 'cool'
2) What one thing that hasn't been done well, or at all, in any MMO, would you most like to see as a thoroughly fleshed out mechanic/content piece/UI feature?

Rather than game balance / content issues, simple features that if they are absent ensure that I won't even bother playing the game.

These seem minor and are mostly a given, but here is a small list:

1. A perfectly responsibe UI. A lot of games have some minor lag/imperfect animation etc - basically play Vanguard and WoW and notice the difference. I want a game that responds perfectly.

2. Perfectly implemented ALT-TABBING. If the game lags when I alt tab, I won't even try it. Sorry, absolutely gamebreaking. If you cannot get alt-tabbing to work, I will use innerspace or another wrapper to get that functionality.

3. A very customizable but already functional UI. I don't expect the perfect UI, but I expect the basic UI to be more than good enough from 1 to whatever max level before raiding.

That's it. Content / balance / fun are of course crucial, but if those things are not present at launch, I don't care how good the game is, I won't try it.

I will add that one thing that makes a game beatiful to me is not the amazing eyepopping graphics, but the atmosphere and the art direction. The night elf newbie zone for Warcraft is incredible and feels straight out of lord of the rings. I saw the concept art you produced and it looks incredible and exactly what I like, if you can get it translated in a game well I will be very impressed

[Ukerric]

Originally Posted by Ngruk

1) The one core basic feature would you 100% expect to be in, and expect to be perfected at launch, bug free and 'cool'

It's kind of hard to answer. Because I'd rather have multiple core basic features working, not just 1

2) What one thing that hasn't been done well, or at all, in any MMO, would you most like to see as a thoroughly fleshed out mechanic/content piece/UI feature?

Player housing. A housing that integrates well with gameplay, and contributes meaningfully to it. Almost every modern MMO integrated player housing after the fact, which means it wasn't an integral part of the gameplay - it wasn't there at launch, so it was completely irrelevant. (or it was at launch, and completely irrelevant: see Anarchy Online)

DAoC copied UO's housing purpose by making it a conduit for player NPC vendors, but that model has passed away: no one wants to spend all its time running around to find the right vendor. Even EQ2's model of player vendors fails - except for extremely pricey stuff, people will not run to your house to buy from you, they're going to pay the broker.

LOTRO managed to do one thing well, which was sharable storage, but that was not original; it's a straight lift of the old Turbine AC1's housing (various sized-houses, hooks, storage chest; except for the floor shapes, it's almost exactly the same).

The only game that approached meaningful housing is ATitD, notably the later telling (3rd). The whole concept of camp was a natural fit to the game, and creating houses (as a kludge to avoid graphical clutter) was a big thing.

So, yes. Housing, and some thing that contributes meaningfully to the player experience, and integrates well with its characters:
- Expandable storage (instead of a bank. Your "bank" access your house's general purpose chests)
- Customized "roleplay" storage (weapon racks, armor displays, bookcases, potion cabinets...)
- Gate anchor (allowing quick trips)
- Tradeskill/craft integration (you can't forge an epic item unless you have a correctly customized forge on the ground floor. I mean, those public forges are so awfully maintained, it's a disgrace)
- Socialisation (example: a Mage can open a portal to his current location, but only from the front of his house. Guild members can have an incentive to build a guild "quarter" of housing close to the mage's to be able to port quickly to home, and hop into the portal)

and a couple more stuff. Instead of being completely irrelevant, "properly managed" housing should significantly enhance your character's capacities.

Note that I'm against "player towns", like AoC's. They promote complete segregation of your guild from all other players - meaning you cease to interact with them. I'm all for "player-populated cities" instead. I'll take WoW as an example: imagine Stormwind, but where every single building in the city is potentially an appartment/rentable (you need of course heavy instancing of the appartments interiors - or you end up with EQ2's housing model which inflates your city to enormous sizes). You have quarters (your guild decided to set up shop in the west canals, so most guild members are concentrated there, because the guild has rented the Blue Inn as its HQ, and you get a significant rent reduction by being close), people run back and forth across the city naturally (instead of being forced there by virtue of carefully avoiding any trainer or AH).

The rest is left to the armchair designer's imaginations, including how to use pricing controls as a way to spread population over the city, instead of everyone taking the room just over the AH.

[Pharazon]

It is pretty damn funny that EQ still has the best chat AND LFG system. Two of the most important features of an MMO and they haven't improved in 6-8 years? They don't even need to be improved from EQ, just copied, yet nobody does this.

For me..

1) Cool, varied dungeons with interesting loot. If its gonna be cookie-cutter rooms and caves where one dungeon has the same loot as the next don't bother.

2) The old dream of a game world that players can see their effect on. I can understand this being technologically challenging, but anything would be cool.