When looking at the popular MMO's today, I cannot escape the feeling that the vast amount of different skills, weapons, monsters and quests added by designers is just a weak attempt to hide the fact that the game itself is just boring. I would expect that, when presented with the right game mechanisms, the creativity of the players themselves will provide the variety needed to keep the game world interesting for a very long time. If so, then why add so much special designed content? After all, making content is expensive and balancing all those skills and weapons is hard.

Just my thoughts, I would like to hear your opinion! do you agree or is it just my personal taste?

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I cannot escape the feeling that the vast amount of different skills, weapons, monsters and quests added by designers is just a weak attempt to hide the fact that the game itself is just boring.

I completely disagree with this. It can be very fun and satisfying to make the choices for which new skills & items to go after and it's always fun to encounter new mobs and new quests.

What would be these game mechanisms?

For a grind game, adding lots of stuff is how you keep players playing. Removing content would make them reach "the end" sooner. I don't think balancing it all is that hard due to the interactions between skills and items. They do minor tweaks here and there to please the community of whiners, but there will always be unbalanced stuff. Last time I checked, WoW used a point buy system for their items based on the item level. As long as their system is fair, stats are roughly equivalent and stat distribution diverse between items, players will find some are better with certain skills and others with other skills without much balancing if any. Creating a new item can take a minute with most of it spent thinking a new name and it can take players a month just to acquire it. That's a good return on investment.

Thanks for your replays, maybe you are right and its just me. After all, MMO's are still vastly popular. However, I still think that MMO's don't need to be so complex to remain interesting.

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Original post by Tiblanc For a grind game, adding lots of stuff is how you keep players playing. Removing content would make them reach "the end" sooner.

This is exactly what I mean, players keep playing until they have seen all there is to see and done everything there is to do. However, why do the game designers have to provide all those things explicitly?

As a child, I have played many many hours with my Lego. Only a few different shapes and colors, but the possibilities seemed endless.

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Original post by NateDog It can be very fun and satisfying to make the choices for which new skills & items to go after and it's always fun to encounter new mobs and new quests.

Having only a few simple mechanisms does not mean there is nothing new to do/see. The mechanisms should simply open up a world of endless possibilities for the players. If players are encouraged to be creative, then there is always something new to do and see in the world.

We nead MMO Tetris!

I also think that MMO:s have to linear story arch.
(simply put idea is to get better numbers at stats.)

Maybe some day there will be game, where goal is to build
living virtual society among players.

Predifined quests are also bad. Better to give players possibility
to create "quests" to others just by living in world.

(example: one player steals items, and others have to track him down.)
Server automaticly drops some tracks/finger prints/clues at crime site.
Some NPC players might get special conversation topics ie. "Have you seen <player>"

And also more dynamic world in MMO would be nice.
So that players actually could reshape the world.
(what is the point of mmo persistant world, if it`s mostly static?)

/Tyrian

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Original post by TyrianFin And also more dynamic world in MMO would be nice. So that players actually could reshape the world. /Tyrian

This could be such a mechanism that could give endless possibilities to the players. Imagine a world where players can join up to build cities and strongholds never seen before. Imagine the epic battles that will result when a rivaling clan besieges its enemies city.
This is the kind of things I would like to see emerge. As a designer, you give your players an interesting tool. But you can never fully predict in what marvelous or creatively twisted ways the players will use this tool.

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Original post by TyrianFin We nead MMO Tetris!

LOL, It has been done: http://www.joystiq.com/2008/03/14/play-warlords-online-the-puzzle-quest-creators-mmo/

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Original post by TyrianFin Maybe some day there will be game, where goal is to build living virtual society among players.

Again, it has been done: Second Life

It seems there is nothing new under the Sun (be it the real one or a virtual one :D ).

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Original post by Tiblanc For a grind game, adding lots of stuff is how you keep players playing. Removing content would make them reach "the end" sooner.

What dietepiet was saying was to change the game mechanics so that you didn't need the grinding style games.

It is the difference between Objects and Interactions. In current MMos the developers keep puting in more stuff (obejcts) but not really increaseing the what you can do with them (interactions).

Increaseing interactions generally means increasing the amount of game rules and this is why they don't do it as changing the game rules can change the game too much and drive people away. What is needed is a way of increasing the interactions without having to change the game rules.

One way is to make the system emergent, that is new rules are produced as emergent properties of the curent game system when new types of objects are added. This can be a powerful approach, but it is extremely hard to do.

Another is to make the amount of interactions as big as possible from the start, but again this is hard to do because each interaction causes a geometric increase in complexity and it will quickly make it so that the developers can't understand what is going on in the game (let alone the players).

I thiink it is this drive for more interactions that is the driving force behind why so mane peoople wna to make games that are as close to real world physics as posible.

What we need is a simple system that has a vast amount of interactions.

Interesting analysis Edtharan, I definitely seek a way to increase interactivity with the world and other players. I however do not think that this has to results in more and complex game rules.

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Original post by Edtharan I think it is this drive for more interactions that is the driving force behind why so mane people want to make games that are as close to real world physics as possible. What we need is a simple system that has a vast amount of interactions.

Reality is a good example: The laws of Newtonian mechanics fit on a single page, So the rules themselves are not complex at all, but the reality emerging from these rules is complex and versatile. After thousands of years, we still manage to think up new ways to harness these laws to achieve our goals. This is exactly what I seek for a game world.

Glance at: A Tale in the Dessert, WurmOnline, SecondLife, Haven and Hearth, and EvE Online.

All those MMOs provide very different ways of managing a player controlled world, and problems that come from such mechanics.

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Glance at: Guildwars, EverQuest 2, World of Warcraft, Runescape, and EvE Online.

To see how developers manage expansions in very different ways.

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As for games becoming boring. Of course they are, you're better off shedding players who have become bored of the fundamental mechanics of the game than trying to keep them. After all the human mind isn't really made to do the same thing forever, MMO expansions are for the people between the "got it" and "had it" stage of game play(IE why some MMOs have 6 month expansions, others yearly, and others a few times a month).

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Original post by dietepiet Interesting analysis Edtharan, I definitely seek a way to increase interactivity with the world and other players. I however do not think that this has to results in more and complex game rules. Quote: Original post by Edtharan I think it is this drive for more interactions that is the driving force behind why so mane people want to make games that are as close to real world physics as possible. What we need is a simple system that has a vast amount of interactions. Reality is a good example: The laws of Newtonian mechanics fit on a single page, So the rules themselves are not complex at all, but the reality emerging from these rules is complex and versatile. After thousands of years, we still manage to think up new ways to harness these laws to achieve our goals. This is exactly what I seek for a game world.

I agree, and I didn't actually say that it was necesary to incrase the complexity and amount of game rules, just that it is difficult to do so without increaseing them.

I even used the example of physics as where developers are getting the rules to increase interactions wihtout necesarily increaseing the complexity of the rules.