It seems in the MMOs I play these days, dungeons are just linear pathways with stronger than average monsters.

I remember back when I got the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time on my n64 that I actually enjoyed dungeons for the multiple puzzles they had.

Is it me, or is there a distinct lack of these sort of puzzles in MMOs? The technology has been here for a while, so would you think it'd be interesting to see an MMO with dungeons that also included multiplayer dungeon puzzles that required a small team to co-operate?

If you know of any MMOs that use puzzles regularly let me know! I'd love to check it out.

Edit: Turns out if I put platforming in the title and describe something else, people will notice. Fancy that. Either way, it has also come to my attention that games don't also include fun platforming aspects either. Your thoughts on the matter?

~Zummy.

Normally I would consider platforming to be the jumping part of a game. It's true that MMOs in general don't have jumping quests. Maplestory is the only exception I know of, and the controls are not very good, which is the kiss of death for jumping.

Maplestory and Dofus both have multiplayer puzzles and they are pretty terrible.

On the other hand Uru Online has good adventure-game style puzzles, but is not really multiplayer.

Normally I would consider platforming to be the jumping part of a game.

Well, yeah. On what planet does "platforming" mean "puzzles," Zummy?

[quote name='sunandshadow' timestamp='1308162588' post='4823722']
Normally I would consider platforming to be the jumping part of a game.

Well, yeah. On what planet does "platforming" mean "puzzles," Zummy?
[/quote]

Earth, but not your Earth, my Earth. I reject your Earth and substitute my own. I had a slight suspicion that I was using the wrong term, but either way, puzzles and platforming are also missing.

@sunandshadow- You always reply to my threads and you always reply pretty well, I just realized that. Pretty awesome. I can understand that Maplestory and Dofus puzzles are terrible, and your opinion on that matter. Never heard of Uru Online, but I'll look into it later. However, I'd like to ask you another question: Do you think that it's a bad idea to include these types of mechanics in this specific genre? I'm specifically trying to figure out if "Maplestory and Dofus' puzzles are horrible" stems from either "The genre doesn't support platforming/puzzle mechanics well" or "The companies just didn't execute it as smoothly as most singleplayer console companies do".

@Tim Sloper- Yeah, I think I need to get a firmer grasp on terms from here on out. There have been a few times I've done this before and caused a bit of confusion. I'll pay more attention to this in the future and actually research terms I'm unfamiliar with.

Minecraft is kinda platforming, although I don't know if that's really an MMO (I don't play it, I know you hop around though).

MMO isn't really a specific genre. Well I guess it can be considered one, but there are a wide variety of MMO's (well... two at least, MMOFPS and MMORPG, and maybe a few others). Do you have a specific style of game in mind for it?

I could see some kind of an MMO being done, but it would extremely awkward I think. Alternately, you could do something like Demon's Soul (might be the wrong game, someone correct me if it is), where it's a single player game, but you can 'replay' the past events of other players. Like if you're in a cave or something, and someone else died there or something you could see what happened to them. Not technically an MMO, but it would be more easily put into a platformer game.

@sunandshadow- You always reply to my threads and you always reply pretty well, I just realized that. Pretty awesome. I can understand that Maplestory and Dofus puzzles are terrible, and your opinion on that matter. Never heard of Uru Online, but I'll look into it later. However, I'd like to ask you another question: Do you think that it's a bad idea to include these types of mechanics in this specific genre? I'm specifically trying to figure out if "Maplestory and Dofus' puzzles are horrible" stems from either "The genre doesn't support platforming/puzzle mechanics well" or "The companies just didn't execute it as smoothly as most singleplayer console companies do".

Uru is the online descendant of the Myst series, so it plays like your typical 3D adventure game.

My opinion is that multiplayer puzzles are an inherently bad idea, because in Maplestory and Dofus the horrible part is trying to get four or more people to all stand in the right spot. The only thing that really makes it worse is if the developers were dumb and/or mean enough to put the puzzle where aggressive monsters are. On the other hand I'd love to see more incorporation of single-player puzzles into MMOs. Especially puzzles that can be a bit randomized within the puzzle so no definitive walkthrough can be created. Puzzle minigames are also great as the 'work' of crafting or a solitaire activity where players can earn a little money and prizes whenever they are tired of combat. NeoPets, although not a true MMO, is one of the best uses I've ever seen of minigames including puzzle ones.

My opinion is that multiplayer puzzles are an inherently bad idea, because in Maplestory and Dofus the horrible part is trying to get four or more people to all stand in the right spot. The only thing that really makes it worse is if the developers were dumb and/or mean enough to put the puzzle where aggressive monsters are. On the other hand I'd love to see more incorporation of single-player puzzles into MMOs. Especially puzzles that can be a bit randomized within the puzzle so no definitive walkthrough can be created. Puzzle minigames are also great as the 'work' of crafting or a solitaire activity where players can earn a little money and prizes whenever they are tired of combat. NeoPets, although not a true MMO, is one of the best uses I've ever seen of minigames including puzzle ones.

That's interesting. Single player puzzles on a mmorpg. Now, I'm wondering, where would you put these puzzles? The way I see it (and of course there can be other views) puzzles (for the most part) go in dungeons. Now, if my years of MMORPG addiction taught me anything, it's pretty darn uncanny to solo dungeons.

Which means if I place it in a dungeon, then I have to account for the additional people present. Now I could make puzzles that can "potentially" be solved by one person, but then it's pretty boring for the 4 others (or how many would fill a party) not involved, right? The flipside to that, is to create a puzzle that requires multiple people, which we have already touched on and defined as a "generally bad idea".

Another alternative would be to put them outside dungeons and on side story arcs or repeatable solo quests. Fair enough, but then it doesn't become a focal point for the game unlike the Zelda series, where getting keys and traversing rooms were considered a hefty part of the content. The purpose of this discussion was to aim more towards putting it at the forefront saying "we have an mmorpg that will actually make you think/solve puzzles instead of just grinding away at your next level." That being said, I wonder how much of an impact these puzzles could have if they takes place more in the side arcs than the main story arc.

I like your idea of randomizing, in fact, I'm studying the programming behind that right now to complement my school studies (going for a programming degree).One of the best (albeit a bit annoying) features of Diablo II was the fact that the maps were never quite the same no matter how many times you played it. I was thinking of doing something very similar for dungeons.

Keep the discussion flowing, good results so far. Thanks for the different perspectives!

I don't personally see the problem with soloing dungeons - that is after all what you are doing in Zelda. But then I'm a solo player at heart - while I love MMOs, I pretty much always prefer to fight and explore and craft by myself, only interacting with others for conversation and trading, and possible dueling/spectating others' combat. I went around soloing all the low level dungeons in WoW for the fun of it, even though it was nowhere near as enjoyable as it could have been if the dungeons actually had a properly-scaled single-player mode. But another possibility might be having solo puzzle dungeons and multiplayer combat dungeons. And, as I said, puzzles are a natural choice to include in crafting instead of dungeons. Perhaps each time you get a new kind of ore you have to do a puzzle to unlock using it as a crafting ingredient. This puzzle can be done safely in town at the player's convenience. I've played several games where the player has a book or other container listing all puzzles they have obtained and showing which have been solved and what the prizes are for solving the remaining ones.

Within the MMO community, the general consensus is that dungeons are there for scaled up group efforts, that's why they contain harder monsters and the likes. The main difference is that Zelda focuses more on exploring/solving than fighting, and MMO dungeons (like WoW) focus more on combat. It is interesting to see how puzzles could be implemented into crafting. I see your point and it's a very solid one, I'll do some research on current implementations on it to see how my own opinion evolves.

Part of the underlying reason why I made this thread is to draw the focus to progression in MMOs. Mainly, if you want to progress, you go here, or there, fight this or that. Depending on the "here" or the "that" it changes in difficulty, while this is fine, but I want to try and take a bit of the action and add it to non-combat scenarios. Wouldn't the world be much more fun to explore if you had to jump onto floating pieces of land, or scale ladders/jump pits/cross bridges that may fall/break/swing? I think it would be cool if you went to Ulduar on WoW and instead of just clearing the room of monsters and moving to the next, you had to do additional things, like finding a key, finding the door, manipulating your surroundings, etc. MMOs just don't seem to add that type of content, and it was my nature to ask "Why?".

That's mostly a developer choice that is common, and players just don't like change for some reason. There is effectively no difference from placing harder enemies in a dungeon or in plains or in a fat gnome named Bob's house. The concept behind it is probably that people don't typically go into dungeons (at least in fantasy before games got hold of it and ruined it; remember Boromir and Legolas's aversion to going into Moria?), so evil things wander their way in and stay there. Why not change it up? Considering you're doing that anyway, or planning to with the puzzle MMO thing.

On a side note, I apparently have three reputation and can't figure out where it came from. So if anyone happens to see a post that was upped you should tell me, as I'm curious.