Quote:

Original post by Gyrthok I think its all about the rate at which a users satisfaction is gained. In a FPS, satisfaction is immediate, they shoot things, those things die, they prove their l33t skill. In an RPG, they grind and grind over a longer period of time to get that really cool gear, or that awsome set of skills, or both. Since MMO's cost a wad of cash to maintain, its obvious companies will go with what engages players the longest, and thus provide the most money.

I can see how the rate is important, but I would probably aim for the middle road here. Not the instant gratification of a frag in a FPS, and not the tedious grind to get that single extra one dex gear in a normal MMORPG. The goal would probably be the slow but steady gratification I imagine chess/civ players get when they see their strategy bear fruit. I wouldn't know since my skills are lacking at those games :)

In general I envision a rpg where you tweak and upgrade your stats and gear in different ways that doesn't just make it better overall, as is the norm, but you always have to make tradeoffs. Would be hard work to balance it all though.

Quote:

Original post by Gyrthok In this sense satisfaction can be maintained not be making gallons of new content, maps, and experiences for all the players, but by creating small pockets of new content/area's and hiding them/making them randomly accessed as incentive to continue playing. Though that doesn't mean new content and/or expansions shouldn't continue to be made for all.

I agree, and this could be another side benefit of all that very hard work of creating a (semi-)dynamic world. If the world is changing from time to time, all those old places you've already been to might do with another visit just to check up on things.

@ Telastyn
Will check puzzlepirates out. Sounds interesting, even though the mix of puzzles and pirates seems a little like whipped cream and hotdogs... :)

[rantish dissertation]

At all times in a grind-ladder game, there are uber-players who pwn you, and n00bs whom you pwn.

You feel hate and rancor toward the uber-players, and secretly think that they are all lifeless 11-year-olds who play the game 16 hours every day, and thus are beneath you. You feel nothing but contempt for the n00bs, and miss no opportunity to remind them that they are dirt and should GTFO.

At level 5, level 10 players are 11-year-old losers who will never have a date and level 2 players are helpless idiots who couldn't quest their way out of a paper bag. At level 50, the level 60 guys are the ones who blow all the money they make bagging groceries on hours and hours of internet cafe time, and the level 30 players are total smacktards who couldn't get a clue if you carved it into their ganked corpse.

And so it goes, an endless treadmill with a carrot dangling in front of it and the player, like Tantalus, strives eternally for a goal that is forever just out of reach. The goal, of course, is to have EVERYBODY else in the game fall into the "clueless n00b" category, and have you, the character, be to them as the hero of a single-player RPG is to NPC enemies, wading through throngs of them, laying about with your sword and spreading death in all directions.

But you never get there, and eventually you have to settle for other forms of amusement, until finally you just quit playing the stupid game.

[/rantish dissertation]

So my advice is to have a clear point in the game where you cease to climb that ladder, stop walking on that treadmill, and crystallize your place in the game's hierarchy. Here's how you do it:

Have the first five hours of the game be grind. Not just any grind, but a min/max tutorial grind. What you do during this time will determine your character's strengths and weaknesses. Where you go will decide what vulnerabilities and resistances you have. A handy tip feature will teach you about game dynamics. Then, after you finish all this up, you "graduate" into the real game, which is a vast plateau instead of a summitless mountain.

Your character is defined by a five-hour grind, and now he's just about done growing. The rest of the game is like other games at level 60: You get together with other players and decide what will be fun. Then you do it. If you decide that you need a medic to get through a particular set of challenges or attain a particular goal, then you start an alternate character, and in five hours you have a totally serviceable medic that can actually help your buddy's three-month old commando get through the robot-infested ruins of Technopolis. Or you just find someone who's already a medic and invite them to come with you.

The problem here is that you run out of content. You don't have the hierarchy of monsters to constantly challenge the players, but that dynamic has always sucked(Don't go over that bridge! The beetles there are yellow, and tougher than any bear you've ever seen!). It was stupid in Dragon Warrior, and it's stupid in World of Warcraft.

Instead, have a reasonable and intelligible system. The really badass monsters are rare, because they need a lot of territory to hunt and feed themselves. There's no reason for 5000 Lions to be able to coexist in a little forest, and there's even less reason for one guy with a ninja sword to be able to kill six of them at a time. You want to hunt lions, you get a group of guys with spears and go hunt some lions. No amount of toad-stabbing will make you able to take a lion in a wrestling match. That's also a stupid relic from a time when incrementing numbers was the only way to show growth in a video game.

PvP will make some areas unapproachable. EVE's 0.0 security space is a free-for-all, and you stay out of Faspera because there are some badass pirates living there. THey don't guard a secret trove of treasure, and they don't have the key to a magical chest. They play EVE in the evenings and enjoy killing you. That's why you don't go there unless you are friends with "Swisher". You are not.

Make an MMO world that can be inhabited, and in which an organized society is worth more than a fifty-two-hour sleepless bender.

These people are paying by the month, and having them on 24-hours a day doesn't make you more money, it just causes lag. Have "powerlevelling" be passive. If you want to boost your shotgun-shooting ability, you get a shotgun and some ammo and practice. Tell your guy to train for a few hours, then turn off the game and go to bed. In the morning, you will be out of ammo and have spent $500 on range fees, but will get a +3 bonus to your shotgun skill. This will let you aim faster and hit targets more reliably. It will not make your shotgun destroy tanks.

Whew. I'm tired now.

What I want to do with my MMORPG is to make the level grind (perhaps) less necessary. My idea was that within a couple weeks of hardcore gaming, or couple months of slower gaming, the player would hit the point where the number of hours to increase skill would could go up not just a little bit like most MMORPGs but up at an very high level. Say the first hour would gain 100 ranks but the 100th hour would gain 0.01 ranks of a given skill (plan on learning what you do, swing a weapon, you swing that weapon better next time). So basically, all players skill would even out fairly quickly.

Now on top of this would be abilities (still not sure if I'll call em skills vs abilities in the long run...) Every 10 hours of using a given skill, the player would be allowed to select a new ability for that skill. For melee weapons the skill might be straight up modifiers (quick strike to strike faster, power strike to do more damage, etc...) or "stratigy" modifiers ( Feint to decrease the oponents ability to block, low slash which is more likely to hit an oponent who just made an overhand attack (must learn swordplay terms), etc...).

This way a player who has only played 10 hours can actually kill a player with 100 hours and a player with 100 hours can take down one with thousands of hours. Its the stratigy that is of greater importiance, though the grind skill still factors in.

To avoid players continually grinding just to gain abilities, equipment will break down fairly regularly. Say every tenish hours your sword or your armor will break requiring the player to return to town for a new one, also requiring the player to collect enough cash to afford the new weapon which will also give a way to require the player to come back to town at given intervals to sell off stuff and maintain a large enough bank balance.

This may or may not work but I think it may be a good approach to put some limitation on the hardcore players being all powerful, especially with a game where I play on having PvP be about as common as PvC...

Quote:

Original post by Drethon What I want to do with my MMORPG is to make the level grind (perhaps) less necessary. My idea was that within a couple weeks of hardcore gaming, or couple months of slower gaming, the player would hit the point where the number of hours to increase skill would could go up not just a little bit like most MMORPGs but up at an very high level. Say the first hour would gain 100 ranks but the 100th hour would gain 0.01 ranks of a given skill ... So basically, all players skill would even out fairly quickly.

In my opinion that wouldnt lessin the level grind it would only make it alot more tedious, time consuming, and boring, which is what I think you are trieng to pervent. In my opinoin again if there is any posiblilty of level grinding at all (no matter how long it takes) a couple of over dedicated players with too much time on their hands will level grind and force others to do the same if they want to be able to compete.

I dont think the level grind can ever be killed in a MMORPG. Everyone hates it but it can never be killed.

Quote:

Original post by Drethon What I want to do with my MMORPG is to make the level grind (perhaps) less necessary. My idea was that within a couple weeks of hardcore gaming, or couple months of slower gaming, the player would hit the point where the number of hours to increase skill would could go up not just a little bit like most MMORPGs but up at an very high level. Say the first hour would gain 100 ranks but the 100th hour would gain 0.01 ranks of a given skill (plan on learning what you do, swing a weapon, you swing that weapon better next time). So basically, all players skill would even out fairly quickly.

That's part of the guiding principle behind Guild Wars. The grind is relatively quick up to the max of level 20, and there are even shortcuts and ways to entirely skip the grind and start at level 20 (though with an inferior character). There aren't that many power-ups or great weapons after you hit the cap. The idea is that you then spend all of your time warring with other guilds, and the outcome is based more on skill than time spent grinding. It works pretty well; I'd say my main problem with Guild Wars is that they didn't stick to their principle as closely as they should have: the post-grind part of the game tends to get repetitive and boring because the guild battles aren't that interesting... a lot of people actually found the grind to be more fun, because at least you're seeing new environments and meeting interesting NPCs, rather than staying cooped up in an arena trading l33tsp33k insults with angry middle schoolers for days at a time.

What if the post-grind game took the form of a really hard co-op single-player campaign? You spend ten hours or so levelling to the cap, and then you form a squad of six guys and try to go through a Halo level on Legendary with no respawning. Even the most badass players would suffer casualties, and it's not guaranteed that you'd get through the whole thing.

Requiring teamwork and strategy beyond "tanking" and "buffing" would require a gameplay interface that's a bit more tactical. How about a Fallout-type situation, with a streamlined "simultaneous turn" combat system, wherein every player and enemy plots their next move, and they all occur simultaneously? That way you won't spend six hours waiting for your turn, and you'll have a chance to make good decisions about how to use your skills to the greatest possible effect.

I'd be all about a co-op Fallout game, and with enough content (player generated content owns all else) you could keep it engrossing without the grind.

Quote:

Original post by Iron Chef Carnage What if the post-grind game took the form of a really hard co-op single-player campaign? You spend ten hours or so levelling to the cap, and then you form a squad of six guys and try to go through a Halo level on Legendary with no respawning. Even the most badass players would suffer casualties, and it's not guaranteed that you'd get through the whole thing. Requiring teamwork and strategy beyond "tanking" and "buffing" would require a gameplay interface that's a bit more tactical. How about a Fallout-type situation, with a streamlined "simultaneous turn" combat system, wherein every player and enemy plots their next move, and they all occur simultaneously? That way you won't spend six hours waiting for your turn, and you'll have a chance to make good decisions about how to use your skills to the greatest possible effect. I'd be all about a co-op Fallout game, and with enough content (player generated content owns all else) you could keep it engrossing without the grind.

I think most people would still classify that as "grinding". What's the difference between your usual group dungeon and the new "really hard" dungeon? Just that in the final dungeon, it's impossible to find any new items, you don't get any XP, and you don't get anything for completing it besides bragging rights? I don't think that's going to be an interesting reward for most players... they WANT an ultimate sword of doom at the end of the dungeon, but once you put it there, it becomes "grind".

Similarly, the Fallout co-op sounds just like the rest of the game, except in this case, you don't get any XP or items or anything for winning. But just taking the reward away from a repetitive action isn't going to make it more fun; it's just going to make people feel less pressure that they "have" to do it, which is nice, but it's not going to make people keep paying your monthly fee.

Quote:

Original post by Wombah In general I envision a rpg where you tweak and upgrade your stats and gear in different ways that doesn't just make it better overall, as is the norm, but you always have to make tradeoffs. Would be hard work to balance it all though.

Yep, that's what provided by my current mmorpg i am playing --->
- endless tuning of your toon, there are always tradeoffs,
- hard to say who is better,
- human skill is important (a good combination of human skill and toon stat),
- combats need tactics and co-op,
- almost every char is unique depending how you mold your char,
- almost no such thing as "uber-leet"

Anyway, the mmo model in my current game is a very good one comparing to the mainstream mmos.

So far agree with everything Iron Chef has said, but for this; Why include a part of the game that you call grind at all? Sure, a pretty involved tutorial would certainly be of help, but that could be skippable just like most tutorials are, so you can get right to it when you create your second medic in a row or something. Also, the fallout coop game is one of my (many) wet dreams. :)

Quote:

Original post by makeshiftwings [snip]...they WANT an ultimate sword of doom at the end of the dungeon, but once you put it there, it becomes "grind".

I think it becomes grind when you know that you´re doing that 'dungeon' to get that specific 'sword of doom' reward. Going through molten core twenty times or so, until you get a full set of gear/drops is grind. Doing molten core the first time is not. I think there is some inherent flaws in the way such dungeons work. The most basic is that the dungeon is at all inhabited the second time around... :/

Quote:

But just taking the reward away from a repetitive action isn't going to make it more fun...[snip]

No, but the thing is that it is the repetitive action that's wrong in the first place. And if you put a reward that everyone wants/needs at the end, then that repetitive action becomes mandatory as well... That's where the grind starts.

@ Hawkins8
Could you go into more detail about your game?

Makeshiftwings is right, though. Just being able to play online isn't enough to keep players playing. There has to be a goal. Shooters have scores that lay out your performance relative to other players. Current MMOs have the grind ladder that tells you how terrific you are. Even EVE, which doesn't really have the dungeons and imp slaughter and other grind mechanics, has your skills quietly training in the background, giving you that perpetual reinforcement for gaming.

So what will your game have as a carrot? Nobody could possibly GM for the whole universe, cranking out code as easily as a D&D DM makes up crazy ideas around a candle-lit nerd table. It's unrealistic to think you'll be able to produce game content for an MMO fast enough to keep players engaged in the story all the time. They need something to do.

In most MMOs, that thing is grind. In WoW, EQ, and all the other mainstream MMOs, you grind XP. In EVE, you grind money so you'll have a ship to fly when you get the skills to fly it. There's always a sense of progress, of being a little better today than you were yesterday, and there's the promise of being better still tomorrow.

I think we're trying to have our cake and eat it too: How can we come up with a constant, progressive activity without having a grind? But the problem is that any constant, progressive activity is by definition a grind.

Maybe you could take the focus off of character grinding. The obvious white elephant here is the "world grind", where you actually change the world around you by tiny increments, expanding your borders, reducing monster populations near valuable resource nodes, and developing technology to benefit yourself and those who follow you.

That's tough to do. It requires you to put a lot of design effort into stuff that won't be seen at all by players for a few months, and then will only be enjoyed by a few. EVE designers must have worked hard to get the models and stats and requirements together to implement the Titan-class megaship into the game, but it takes literally months to build one, and close to a year to gain the skills to fly it. I don't know that there's a single Titan in the entire EVE universe. But the promise of a Titan, the hope of a Titan, puts light into newbies' eyes and makes the world richer.

So long-term goal that can be worked on, but that don't necessarily involve mindless grinding or repetitive actions, might be a valuable source of gameplay. Put a dozen shards of an artifact in the game. Have them be hidden in plain sight, not at the bottom of a ten-level dungeon or the inner sanctum of a palace. Make sure that each shard is found by a different group, and let a few be found by clueless newbs. Then, let it slip that if you collect all the fragments and perform a ridiculously complex and demanding ritual involving items that must be collected from all over the game world, you'll get some kind of incredible power, and will change the face of the world forever. Then let the players go to war, and make peace, and trade empires for the shards, and don't put the twelfth one into the game until you finish an expansion. Then drop it in some newbie training ground and when someone finally manages to put all the chunks together, release the expansion.