Stagnant MMOs

This is a response for a discussion in the comments on Spinks' post Bring on the clones.

I find that both the ways in which players interact and the game systems (not necessarily just Combat) of the MMO space have been mostly stagnant for the last 8 years. There have been minor attempts to mix it up (e.g. AoC's melee combat, Aion's jet packs, Public Quests, Dungeon Finder), but the developers still copy "the same black and white, two-faction faux war with safe and 'contested' zones; the same action combat with the same pace, hotbars, and skills; the same solo quest grind with the occasional dungeon run; the same poo-pooed crafting system that has little consequence to players; the same 'hyrbid' classes which really aren't hybrids at all, but rather 3 min-maxed role specializations that are the Holy Trinity through and through" (link).

I play very few games. I find one that has enough complexity and depth (often requires multiplayer in order to uncover that depth) such that I stick with it for years until I've exhausted its playability. I love First-Person Shooters, but I only really love 3 of them: Goldeneye/Perfect Dark, Counter-Strike, and Team Fortress 2. These are all vastly different games. They all play differently; they have distinct strategies, resources, tactical considerations, objectives, moods, etc. To highlight a variation, Counter-Strike is about concealment and weapon accuracy/bullet spread; TF2 is about evasion, keeping or closing distance, and reloading. Never mind that a shotgun in both games is the same; the situations and tactics for using it are very different (and must be learned).

I've played very few MMOs as well: FFXI, WoW, and now Eve. I have purchased or trialed many others (EQ2, LotRO, WAR, Guild Wars, AoC, Chronicles of Spellborn, Tabula Rasa, Global Agenda, Champions Online, Ryzom, Aion, Rift, Vanguard, Dawntide, Darkfall, FF14, and The Secret World). FFXI, WoW, and Eve have drastically dissimilar game systems.

• FFXI is about cooperation: working with players to level up, complete challenging quests, or make money. Crafting was a motivator for me to expand my character's available classes and gain more levels. It has an extremely friendly community and many group activities: slower-paced, group-oriented combat, XP groups, epically long quests, arena-style fights to earn money, raids, PvP, and group crafting.
• Eve is deceit and information warfare. It is a struggle between knowing that you need friends to move up in the world and not knowing whom to trust. Its community has an outward appearance of borderline psychotic, but within Corporations, players are friendly to each other and willing to do activities together. Eve is a sandbox and has the most content of any MMORPG ever, and thus newer players have a monstrous time just getting their barrings. Nothing in Eve is simple, and there are many ways to enjoy the game.
• WoW offers convenience and satisfying gameplay. It has extremely snappy and fast-paced combat, and very little in terms of a virtual world. It is about using people as briefly as possible to acquire the next achievement. WoW is two distinct games: the leveling game, and the game at level cap. Hop in for a few minutes, do a quest or two by yourself, and log out without interacting with anyone. Or if you're at level cap, you do chores by yourself, queue up for a dungeon without speaking, or maybe you have a scheduled raid where you recite a dance that has no transferable knowledge or skills (to another raid).

Most of the games I listed in parentheses above are very similar to WoW. While the classes might look different, or the spells be named something unfamiliar, or the setting be changed, they all follow the same template.

1. A solo leveling game with a dungeon/raid-heavy "end" game produces the same community as I experienced in WoW. 
2. Since everyone must be capable of soloing mobs, the combat abilities can't vary too wildly between classes. 
3. If combat is fast-paced, players have enough time to launch two, maybe three attacks before moving on to the next mob; this necessitates that combat be wholly uninteresting since you only need to use 3 abilities. 
4. Typically the mobs are not varied enough to require players to consider a different set of 3 skills, because that would be too disruptive and slow down the pace of leveling.

When developers describe a system akin to Public Quests, they are talking about an exception. I can read between the lines: combat is normally performed by yourself, but then the game has these exceptions scattered about where you work with other players. The sad part is that very little coordination is required during the PQ, and people rarely converse. Playing alone together at its finest.

If I can look at a list of game features, and envision my entire career with the game (solo quest grind, occasional dungeon, switch class, solo to max, chase after gear and reputation), then I've already played it in another form, and thus I'm not interested in playing it again.

Uncapped PvE Content and Prestige

Spinks pointed out the irony of WoW's 10-man raids: namely that the raids are too small to sustain a guild around a 10-man raid team. Raids were reduced in player count because of logistics and accessibility concerns. Now they are so small that they cause logistics and accessibility issues. /ironic

This reminded me about uncapped PvE content. WoW used to have uncapped encounters in the form of world bosses, and it will be getting some new ones in Mists. Rifts are uncapped, as well as other forms of Public Quests. PvE content in Eve has no player count limit. Many of the original raids in EQ and FFXI were also uncapped.

It's important to note that there are no "balance scaling" mechanics in these systems. Mobs don't receive extra HP with every player at the fight. Nor does more money or gear drop depending on the raid size.

There are some advantages to unrestricted PvE encounters:

• Bring as many friends as you want. No one has to be second string or on the bench.
• Bring as few friends as online. You don't need to cancel the raid if one player doesn't show up, because the encounter is not necessarily attuned for X number of players.
• Risk and Reward are inherently balanced. Larger the party, the less risk involved, but fewer payouts per person.
• Challenge is self-ordained. Make the fight as easy or hard as you want.
• Pick-up-groups could do any content. ++Accessibility

I see four reasons that players raid:

1. Story/Content
2. Power (e.g. character progression, money, gear)
3. Challenge
4. Prestige

Players interested in fulfilling the needs of Story, Power, and Challenge will have their needs met by the uncapped system. Players can easily experience any content they wish; they simply need to bring enough bodies. They can toy with risk and reward to modify the power payouts. And they can adjust the difficulty by inviting a different number of raiders.

Those seeking Prestige, however, will not be happy with an uncapped raid. If the encounter were a signal of prestige, and because of its challenge or accessibility, predicates that the access or completion of the content is rare, then Prestige players would want as few people in that elite club as possible. The scarcer the resource, then the more valuable it is deemed. The rarer the achievement, then the more distinction it bears. 

Some times there is confusion regarding the difference between Prestige and Challenge. Prestige certainly can and often does derive from Challenge. If a task is difficult, then fewer people are capable of completing it, thus making the success rarer. But Prestige can come from a time commitment: e.g. level 99 in Diablo 2. If everyone were dedicated enough to reach level 99, it would not be prestigious (like level 85 in WoW).

The Achievements you unlock, the gear you wear, and the stories you tell are trophies that signal your prestige. The more people with those trophies, then the less special they are. But the players seeking content, money, and challenge will all be having fun.

From a development and design perspective, less time needs to be allocated to meticulously balance and rebalance fights. Obviously the encounter payouts need to be in line with other content so that players have an actual choice. But there is no need for a scheduled nerfing or complex algorithms that adjust the difficulty based on the number of players. Let us decide our level of risk, reward, and challenge.

World PvP Case Study: WoW

During my definition of World PvP, I explained that PvP in an MMORPG is inherently unfair, and World PvP is simply a mindset. It isn't knowing how to attack, but when, and for what purpose. World PvP is less restricted, and involves nudging a situation in your favor.

While WoW's PvP isn't the cream of the crop, it makes for an interesting case study since the capacity to engage in "world pvp" hasn't changed, yet the popularity of it has. WoW helps illustrate why World PvP is a presumption outside of the game mechanics.

Some of the best moments of leveling a WoW toon involve situations where players fight other players for access to resources. These resources are almost always quest mobs. A high level character "ganking" lowbies for the perverse thrill of exercising power is not world PvP, and actually leaves a bad taste in the mouth of the inexperienced. But that is a problem with game rules, not world PvP.

A brief history of PvP in WoW:

No honor system. Many people questing. Many people, including lowbies, engaging in open world town raids for the novelty of it. No lasting consequences.

Spontaneous Horde raid on Menethil Harbor.

World bosses introduced. Large scale fights to obtain boss loot. Scouting of enemy faction becomes paramount to knowing when to engage boss.

Old Honor system, but no Battlegrounds. Many fights between Southshore and Tarren Mill. Fighting to mutually gain Honor.

Battlegrounds. Much World PvP stomped out since Honor is easier to get in BGs. Without huge gear discrepancies yet, small pockets of world PvP still seen in Plaguelands. Blackrock Mountain has much PvP fighting over dungeon and raid access.

Blizzard creates "outdoor PvP objectives" in Eastern Plaguelands and Silithus, and iterates on them in Burning Crusade. These largely flop. Massive gear discrepancies and prevalence of BGs shatter world PvP expectation. Minor fighting around raid portals.

End of Vanilla saw bored raiders running 5-man PvP excursions while waiting for Arenas and BC. Ad hoc and arranged group fights while roaming.

Arenas are introduced in Burning Crusade to the lauding of "fair and balanced" PvP folks. Resilience is added as a gear attribute. "PvP" is now an official route of character progression, and thus everyone sits in instances to optimize their gear acquisition. World PvP is a dirty word equated to ganking.

Isle of Quel'Danas is added at the end of Burning Crusade to house Sunwell and a fresh batch of chores. This popularizes World PvP in WoW again. Players form parties for protection and fighting; they expect combat while questing. Isle of Quel'Danas implements a common model for World PvP that I will discuss later.

Achievement system is added; reward to kill world leaders is introduced. Cities are in faction-owned zones, and thus combat is opt-in. These raids are not very disruptive to the empty towns.

Wintergrasp experimentation with zone PvP with raid access reward. Like AV, Wintergrasp is just a larger Battleground. Vault of Archavon predictably and regularly changes hands between Alliance and Horde. World PvP is dead throughout Wrath, but accessibility is through the roof.

Blizzard repeats success of Isle of Quel'Danas with Tol Barad at beginning of Cataclysm. World PvP makes a slight comeback. But people quickly get their reputation rewards and leave.

It is fascinating to see interest in world PvP ebb and flow as Blizzard tweaks PvP progression rewards. WoW is very elder game heavy, and thus all the resource warfare is at max level: quest access, raid access, & tradeskill material access. Cataclysm seems to have eliminated many contested quests for Horde and Alliance, so any PvP experienced while leveling is ganking or in a Battleground instance.

I definitely believe there are players in WoW who enjoy world PvP very much, and they would engage in that type of play more often if the rewards were not stacked against them. In the current game, once players gain all the reputation or gear they need from Tol Barad, there is little reason to go back. No other location in WoW comes with the expectation of PvP, and thus there is no world PvP outside of TB.

Some of the comments on my Definition post called into question "influencing the world". While not necessary for world PvP (illustrated with WoW's world PvP: no one would say they hold influence over that world), it is a strong motivator and part of Risk & Consequences that change the emotions conjured by the game, but not the game itself. I hope to expound this soon.

There's Something in the Water

We don’t want level-85 players to have a reasonable shot at level-90 dungeons and raids (or PvP opponents) just because that content is balanced for gear that isn’t much better than what the level-85 players have.

--Ghostcrawler

What a truly baffling sentence. Ghostcrawler is reflecting on the exponential attribute power progression in WoW, and I think this sentence says, "We don't want level 85s doing what is designed for level 90 characters." He never goes into the reason this is a design mantra for WoW, but I can't help but think of the movie Idiocracy:

It's got what plants crave!

Unquestioning and steadfast in their decisions, the WoW designers make seemingly contradictory choices. Why doesn't GC want level 85's to do higher level content? I could only assume it's so players do the leveling "content" first. Yet they constantly assault the leveling game, "The amount of experience needed to gain levels 71 through 80 has been reduced by approximately 33%." That's a patch note from the recent PTR, and those keeping score will know that they've already reduced that experience curve before.

It's almost as if Ghostcrawler trusts no design of WoW-past, not even his own. Only the current design and content is relevant to Mr. Street.

The article goes on, discussing various methods which could bandage WoW's broken attribute system, and then he unloads this gem: "If your answer is that stat budgets don’t have to grow so much in order for players to still want the gear, our experience says otherwise." Silly plebes with your naive remedies; I have data to dismiss your predictable suggestions!

Ignoring the arrogance, what metrics could they possibly have to discredit this simple solution? They can't use data from PTR, because that has bitten them in the ass before (There are huge discrepancies in motivation between PTR and live realms. Honor item costs had to be adjusted after players were getting them in a few hours on live realms.). They can't compare vanilla raiding to BC raiding because there are way too many variables. The only timeframe that I think they could refer to would be the beginning of the Burning Crusade, when after much bitching by players, they increased the attributes on T5 gear to make them more "worthwhile" than T4. (Aside: People don't know what they want, often desiring the opposite of what they say.)

But even this event isn't in a vacuum. Let's assume that after T5 attributes were increased, Blizzard saw a huge swell of players entering T5 raids. Ghostcrawler would like to say this was caused by an increase in reward value. What if players simply finished the T4 content and moved on the T5? What if players had every intention of doing T5 for the marginal rewards, obliged to work their way there slowly by using T4 as a stepping stone? With the margins highly increased, raid leaders rightly assumed T4 was useless and skipped it. Blizzard is in the business of making content obsolete as quickly as possible.