I'm using the term Dungeon rather loosely. Basically what I am referring to by dungeon is:

An instanced environment with a set beginning and a set end boss.
Any combinations of rooms that contain enemies as well as puzzles.

The setting doesn't really matter that much. Like you said, be it a field, or a jail, or even an abandoned city, or a rival faction's city, it will still contain group oriented fights and platforming/puzzle challenges.

The dungeons, in their current incarnations, are for missions/carrying out the main story arc/replay-ability and grouping. Solo wise, you can still explore, and do quests and progress and fight monsters out in the fields if you wish.

However, the main point of this conversation was to address the lack of platforming and puzzle-solving (as seen in most single player RPGs) in the MMO genres. Also, the pros and cons (as you would feel) about having a MMO where puzzle solving and platforming was as abundant as fighting.

For instance, would you feel less like "grinding" because the platforming breaks up the monotony? Or (like sunandshadow) think it's a bad idea because requiring a puzzle to be solved by multiple people is tiresome and aggravating?

I know it's not that important but I think the word you are looking for is morpg or mmorpg. MMO is not (as stated before) a genre itself.

Even though it would be possible (and maybe even desirable) to include puzzles in some MMOFPS like a multiplayer zombie survival game or a shooter where you can complete side missions to gain points for your team (hack the enemy base network etc) what you seem to be suggesting is using puzzles to control the player progression in an rpg (be it fantasy, rl or scifi).

Zelda uses puzzles as a mean to control the player's access to game elements. "Where can I go with the tools I have at hand? Grappling hook? Check, ok, the water palace seems safe to go now!" That is both a fun game element as a game mechanic to create a linear game with seemingly important player choices. "I have a grappling hook and completed the water palace, where else can I use it?"

Talking about multiplayer puzzles, lost vikings (SNES) comes to my mind. It's a single player game but requires multiple characters to act together as a team (for those who don't know the game and I think it should be on the "every game dev should have played this-list" - one viking can block stuff with his shield, one viking can fight with bow and sword and one viking can jump and dash to break walls). This is fun for one player because he only controls one viking at a time while the others are somewhere in the dungeon, waiting to be chosen again. If you apply this to a multiplayer, it get's boring for 2 out of 3 vikings.

If you introduce cooperative gameplay (I wish more console devs would do so!!!) it's fine for a small number of people (often 2) as long as the puzzles are well balanced on both player parts and communication is not an issue. If I sit on the couch and play portals 2 cooperative mode with my girl, we can talk about puzzles, advice each other to take certain actions and even if we fail it is still a fun thing to do because we play together.
Put me in an MMORPG dungeon with a stranger (even only one person) and it becomes tedious.... "why doesn't he see the big red lever right next to him... duh!" "Darn, he fell off the third platform again, so much for his hand-eye-coordination... Where's my Snickers?"
Teamspeak/Skype/Ventrillo or even ingame voip might make it easier to communicate but doesn't solve the problem of missing tollerance towards strangers that you have towards people you know better. As soon as you add more people...



I got off the track, sorry.

Using puzzles in MMORPGs to control progression can be used in a single player way as mentioned before in this thread. As soon as you introduce it as multiplayer puzzles, you restrict access to game content to those who manage to play the game with good friends or "above average" intelligent strangers.
On a side note: When playing FF11 online, i realized that we (the western people, me included) are below average compared to most japanese, chinese and korean players. I think that in an eastern mmorpg, people might be able to solve multiplayer puzzles with strangers as many of them have a different mentality towards playing those games and their own professionalism and performance.

I think, multiplayer puzzles can be a valid game element in console games with a 2 - 4 player cooperative mode and a gameplay that caters to this sort of element.

Wonderful reply!

Yeah, I know MMO genres aren't a single genre, which explains why I plural genres afterward, its just shorter than typing (MMORPG/FPS/RTS/etc.)

Your ideas make sense. Definitely taken into consideration.

~{Hello!} {Auto-Translate} haha, Good times in FFXI. On your note about that, I believe the western audience just has a different attitude than our eastern brothers. No one is particularly better, we just prefer different playstyles. Their mindsets are just generally more helpful towards team oriented tasks, I suppose. We're just in different cultures, so we think different.

Kind of running on the same concepts that Elovoid brought up to some extent, a somewhat original game might be a game focused on exploration. Rather than make preset puzzles with somewhat random or procedural variations, make a big, massive game world. There needs to be combat to some extent, but rather than make that the big part of it (like if you die, you die. No big deal, you respawn with some negative experience, maybe lose some items, something small like that. Just an easy going game, where there aren't a lot of repercussions because you're new or you're bad at it, just some little rules to make it something of a challenge. I mean it would be no fun if you were invulnerable), but include a wide variety of tools (having never really played Zelda I'm not sure if I can compare to it or not), but things like ropes, and grappling hooks, and shovels, and other stuff that I'm too tired to think of. Things you need to get around. Like if you want to get into a cave or a mine or something to kill some kind of a monster (let's say a dragon because I like to use dragons), you would need to get up there if it's up on a mountain. How are you going to do it? Are you going to make a ladder, and to do so cut down trees, make rope to slash it together, etc, which could be done through, say, a series of minigames? Could you throw a hook up there and climb it? To do that you need a hook, so you need to mine some metal or something, hammer it out, again that could be done through some kind of minigame (like the jobs in Fable II), a rope to tie onto it, things like that. Maybe just tie a loop around the rope and try and get it on a rock? Then once you get up there, you got to get through the doors. Beat it on them with an axe or a hammer or something like that? Then in the mines there are drops and stuff you have to traverse, other dangers to be aware of like those nasty goblins, and that dragon, and a Balrog or something. An angry dwarf and a few hundred solemn faces.

I know I kind of deviated from the standard puzzle/platform genre, but I'm kind of in the ballpark still. I've just never been a big fan of the standard puzzle games, like where you got to stand on certain platforms and make them light up or whatever. But with this kind of thing, it's just really kind of a freeform style of game, with keeping the elements of a platformer to some extent, and keeping the thought process going like in puzzles, and it adds in the element of multiplayer a lot easier (I mean yeah you could play by yourself, but wouldn't be a lot more fun with a buddy?). I'm not sure what your goals are, like if you're just wanting to brainstorm, or if you're trying to make money and need help trying to get the gameplay together all the way, or some kind of other project, but that would be a kind of game that I would want to support... now I kind of want to make it.

As mentioned before, platform puzzles tend to be hard to implement in MMORPGs (lag, lack of expertise in jumping/character control skill, limited character control options etc).

What you can do to implement "obstacle-based" puzzles (I think you know what I mean) in MMORPGs is to provide multiple solutions to every obstacle and multiple ways to reach the goal with different rewards. As we mentioned dungeons before, let's take a dungeon with locked doors.

Solution A) Hulk-smash the door, turning it to splinters and lots of noise (possible tools: brute force, a detonation device, a fireball etc)
Reward A) more attention and more guards running towards you

Solution B) use magic to open the door and possibly set of the magic trap
Reward B) either you get through silently or trigger a trap/alarm

Solution C) lockpick the door and possibly
Reward C) a room full of guards that drink their coffee and suspect nothing


Either bring a lockpicker, a mage or brutal force. You get through in any case but the result varies.
Apply this to treasure chests, castle gates, traps, physical obstacles and many more, provide multiple solutions and make sure not to block essential parts from the players. Add optional content through harder puzzles/obstacles like additional treasures, more rooms to explore, easter eggs etc.

There are puzzles in modern MMORPGs. Often they are limited to endgame content like high end raid dungeons (do you remember the DAoC Trials of Atlantis?) and often involve fighting in a special way (boss battles where you have to figure out who to kill first, what spells have which effect on which npc (DAoC again, the last raid boss in the hybernia hybrasil raid dungeon required a lot of casters to dd one boss, a lot of other casters to mezz adds, a lot of melees to flock the main boss to keep him occupied, a number of add clearers to kill special adds, the whole raid had to watch the fire boss mob that flew around and put AOE fire bombs down, a water or wind boss mob used to kick people off the platform and there were no safe spots that didn't get attacked at some time in the fight while the sub bosses had to be "downed" in the right order AND timing to succeed. I might remember some details wrong, I didn't double check what I think to remember today.
I remember clearing that boss for the first time worldwide (germany was first but due to some .... *cough* misunderstanding *cough* ... our achievement got postponed until after the english speaking players were awarded for getting a world first... good old times.

In SWG "back when things were good" you had to bring a lot of people to conquer an enemy base. A Creature Handler/Ranger or whatever for DNA Codes, a Commando for commanding stuff and more I don't remember right now.


This sort of puzzle exists to some extend in most AAA MMORPGs. It often involves fighting and it is often implemented in endgame elements.

We're just in different cultures, so we think different.

I can't talk for the rest of the eastern people but at least in japan, success, performance and your honor/reputation are - even today - a vital point in everyday society. This little fact goes way back and is a key part of the Japanese Mindset. I say this without judgement but it is a given fact. Think about harakiri or take the fact that people endure hunger because they wouldn't dare asking for help. There is a social system in japan but many people prefer hunger to shame while many people in our culture don't mind the "shame" of acknowledging their own weakness to get food/money from other people. People endure hardship with less complaining (see the major part of grinding in many eastern oriented games) and game developers have to keep that in mind.

This also applies to the sort of puzzles and obstacles implemented in games for a different audience.

I remembered an instance of sort of puzzle play in Perfect World that I had forgotten about. I forgot it because it's a pvp gambling activity, a kind of content I avoid, so I didn't play it much. But it does show that multiplayer puzzles where the players are fighting against each other are a possibility. It did have a cooperative element though - you gained cards, and needed certain combinations of cards to advance from each room to the next, so players traded cards (often for large amounts of money, so that was the incentive to cooperate). But there were also rooms where to advance you needed to make 1 pvp kill in the room, or be the last man standing in a battle royale. To gain the cards in pve rooms there was usually a mini-quest or challenge to be done in that room, killing monsters or whatever. I don't know whether any of these were pure puzzles, but they might have been.

Checking it out right now. Nifty concept, I think. I'll have to see how it all pans out, and see if I can't snoop around their forums for player reactions towards it.

Thanks for the info!

Not managed to read all the posts fully but i don't think anyone has mentioned DDO (Dungeons and Dragons Online) yet. It does puzzles pretty well if you have not played it. They tend to follow the classic dungeon crawl style puzzles and are done, from what i know, very well. Found some stuff to give a basic idea on a DDO wiki if you want to check it out:




The Chronoscope

Shadow Crypt




I think it may have platform elements but don't quote me on that never played it for long and even when i did it was a long time ago.

One of the things that springs to mind when thinking about why MMORPGs don't use platform elements as liberally as other game genres is simply the client > server relationship. Having a player jump there way over some platforms only to have them lag at the end and plummet to the death could get really frustrating. It also limits how hard you can make a section. To make it hard for someone with a good quality connection would make it impossible for someone with a low quality one and making it hard for a low quality one may end up making it easy for a high quality one. Apologies if someone already pointed that out.




I do support them being in MMORPGs though. Dungeons, as they stand in the MMORPGs i have played, tend to go the way of tunnel to big room, kill boss in big room and go through the tunnel to reach the next one. This is fine sometimes but it does get very dull. Puzzles and generally making the environment take a bigger roll can really add to the whole group experience. I do see their role predominantly in the group section of MMORPGs than the solo player one.

I believe an MMORPG called "Blade and Soul" is featuring a transport system called Qi-Gong. This is sort of an acrobatics kind of system that allows running, jumping, air gliding, running on water, much more. I believe I saw platforming in some of its videoed dungeons, is it the sort of thing your talking about?

I also agree with Bigdeadbug, DDO handles puzzles very well albeit lack of "platforming".