Has this subject been beaten to death? Yes? Cool, let me beat it some more.

There has been one single aspect of MMOs that continually draws me away from them — the grind. EVERY MMO has one in some shape or form, whether it be monsters, quests, crafting, skills or money. If you want to advance, you have to grind something — work for it. In real life that’s a pretty solid reason, not everyone can have everything they want — if you want something you work for it. But why do we have to go through it in MMOs? Last I checked they were games. I’ve always found putting barriers in place to keep people from the truly enjoyable content, just to keep them paying longer, to be silly. I find my favorite challenges are ones that require true personal skill and thought to overcome, not ones that simply require obscene amounts of free time. (which I don’t have) Leveling, skilling, making money — none of it is really a challenge in ANY game, it just takes a lot of time. This is solely for the benefit of the company producing the game, to try and get people to spend more money — whether it uses the subscription model or the cash shop. Why not change that? What could be changed? How would it be done…

I’m certainly no professional game designer, but I’ve played games for nearly two decades now and seen quite a bit. The typical MMO involves stats, skills/levels/both, and equipment for displaying advancement. I’m pretty fine with equipment — it’s a great visual achievement. But what can be done for the rest?

The wii is a good starting point. The wiimote is just the right type of device that we need to spice things up in the MMO world — deepening the interaction of the player and the game. So, what if we took away the levels and skill levels and instead gave players their equipment, but their ability with it was purely their own? Swords would have to be swung, spell incantations drawn out — all by the player. Stats would still be apart of the game, but not numerically visible to the players (think I’ve used this before in the ideas page?) — actual changes to the characters appearance should allow for that.  This may never come to PCs, but would be cool to see on the wii. 

How would the above be good for removing grind? By taking out some of the most ground elements! The next step is in the content — develop content that can be done in multiple ways, is truly involved and rewarding. Developers set the pace for advancement, they know that if you do x quests you’ll be at y point in the game. However, players do skip content, or do content in a different order and the experience can change. This is fine and should not only be expected, but encouraged.

Content tends to be the most lacking aspect of MMOs. I remember the launch of DDO, in the early levels grinding was pretty much non-existent. You did quests in dungeons that had more depth than simple kill x y number of times. (it may have had some of that though, it has been a while) When you went into these dungeons you had to have a group, and group make up could change the experience. Doing a dungeon a few times was easy when you had a different group each time — it could, and did, change the experience. Having multiple ways of completing a dungeon/quest is an excellent feature to have. The biggest downfall for DDO at its launch was not the quality of the content but the lack of it — they simply did not have the time to create a lot of it since it took longer to make. I see this as being the biggest hurdle to overcome — designing quality content on a mass scale.

The next hurdle is making that content repeatable, and making people want to repeat it. Instancing could go a long way for this — once you’ve killed the evil Dread Lord Ornash in the Keep of Blood, you wouldn’t want to kill him again, would you? But, what if his lieutenant was away pillaging some village, and returned after you had ransacked the place? Now in revenge he’s seeking out your life and the lives of your friends… and now you must all return to the Keep of Blood and truly put an end to the Dread Lords. It would be using the same instance, same elements, but there would be a difference — perhaps this lieutenant has some tricks that Ornash didn’t have, maybe those traps you knew about before are no longer the only ones around.

I think a basic concept of this is being taken up in more MMOs, calling it ‘phasing’, and I suspect it will become pretty commonplace in the next 5-10 years.

Another challenge is removing the gap between players of different ‘levels’. When you start out in WoW/EQ2 now, you’re basically worthless for the first 70 or so levels — everyone is off doing the higher level content since they’ve been playing for years. How can this be overcome? Eve Online does a decent job of it, new players can participate in the content that older players do — to some degree. Certainly no new player can hop into a dreadnaught and start sieging POSs right from the start, but they can fit small, cheap tacklers. They may not be able to jump into a mackinaw and mine ice, but in a short bit of time can get a cheap industrial and haul ice for a corp mate. Removing the majority of numerical stat and skill differences would allow younger players to partake in content that older players go through — and vice-versa. Having more people to group with at any given time is a boon for both the new and old players, and having more people to work with should help build up the community further — allowing for better player retention. 

Removing the grind, removing barriers and allowing for further player interaction can only be a positive thing for MMOs. Perhaps one day it’ll happen…