The Next Generation MMO

I have been talking to my friends for awhile about what I think the next gen MMO should offer, and since I am not going to create my own MMO I will post it here.

Currently we have a model where there is this ideal group that consists of a meat shield that mitigates damage and gets the baddies attention, a healer to heal the said meat shield, and then depending on the game DPS/crowd control/hybreds. Designers then create baddies where you may have to go through some pre programmed series of steps (often repeated several times) in order to defeat the said baddie.

My belief is that monsters, especially the "boss" monster should have multiple ways to be defeated. For example, lets say you have FooG the goblin king who has enslaved a rival goblin clan. The goblin king is slow but hits hard so one way to defeat the monster may be using people who are good at dodging his blows.

Another way to defeat the goblin king might be to talk to the enslaved goblins and get their help. Those little guys would swarm the goblin king taking some of the heat off your group, but in the end any that are left would swarm and attack the group. These guys hit fast (hard to dodge), but for little damage so being able to mitigate small amounts of damage would be a good skill to have.

A third way to defeat the goblin king might be to use the environment (kinda like a puzzle) Perhaps you could climb up on a ledge and attempt to use range. The goblin king throws things or will randomly smash supports that bring the ledge you are on crashing down so it requires a bunch of movement and obstical jumping.

Progaming in these multiple ways to win allows for a greater degree of character creation and group makeup and brings in a more realistic feel to the game.

Thoughts?

 

I don't want to be negative, but this sounds like most MMOs on the market. I think your post is the opposite of what most people on this forum want in SotA or any other game for that matter. It's just been done too many times.

 

Why post it here? SotA is not an MMO.

 

If your post is about no holy trinity (tank, dps, healer) I don't think you'll have any argument. That was really just a way to shoehorn WoW into the dungeon queues. They were stuck with the classes and needed a way to recycle the gobs of old content. I don't fault them for this. But I don't see why anyone would replicate this in a new game.

I'm really looking for a game where resource acquisition (PvE), territory acquisition (PvP), and building (RP / Crafting) work together. So the game looks more or less like Civilization at the macro level but everyone is playing the individual role they want to.

 

I posted it here because SotA has a multi player element.

Kal you missed the middle of my post. I am constrasting what a lot of games do to what I would like to see done. What primeRib says is the type of system I am getting at. In my LARP territorial control is what creates resources that in turn fuel the crafting system. The game is geared toward making resources hard to come by and for there to be a constant drain on the system so you do not have the kind of hyper inflation more games see. What I mean by that is the items that cost a fortune at launch are given away free later in the game. The more "stuff" you want the harder it is to maintain said stuff, which means you must rely more on groups/terriotry and inevidibly conquest.

PVE (brought down fromt he GM's) is what glues everything together through story and plot.

The PVE side of the ball needs to transition into something more than wandering around wackng stuff or even figuring out said quest and then wacking stuff to a meaningful interaction with the environment. The vid I watched where you had to figure out a torch puzzle is a prime example of the tpye of awesomeness I want to see. I want to expand on that where the mobs react to the types of stuff you are doing. IE if you are a range guy then the mob attempts to hide behind stuff or charges you. If you are a melee type then maybe the mob switches to range. THe mob will enrange and do some crazy stuff because your winning or what have ya. The last example might be that you could hold up a torch and spiders back away in fear and attempt to attack your flank.

 

My thought would be that games that have these elements of combat are not really "games" at all. They're social events.

The problem isn't the cookie cutter solutions that everyone's familar with. The problem is that the average player doesn't want to be challenged in any way shape or form. Developers could make the "games" infinately more challenging, but the average player would cry about that and quit. The same people that have grown up buying the hint guide to games before they even buy the actual game are now playing MMO's for the social experience.

So my thought is that your question is fatally flawed by accepting this form of entertainment as a "game." Games are challenging and people win and people lose games. What you're describing is an online interactive singles bar, and I don't play those - I play games.

 

I don't see how having a social aspect to it inherently renders a form of entertainment somehow not a game. Nor how not having a winner renders something not a game. Not a zero-sum game, perhaps, but those aren't the only forms of games, are they?

 

I think what have being done here will attend your thoughts, because the game is supose to be classless, so you are gonna be whatever you want to. There will be no tank, dps or healer the same way of other RPGs.

I agree with the multiple ways to get to an end that you described, this would make the RP more interesting. (But i think they are doing it already).

 

You can put any spin you want on it, but SotA is an MMO you can choose to play alone.

 

Ribbon you bring up an excellent point about classless systems. The classless system allows for people to create what they want, but what they will create will depend on the demands of the environemnt. If the environemnt calls for meat shield/healer/DPS to be successful then the people playing the system will begin to max/min their characters to be the best of those listed categories in order to create the best group possible. This wont happen at first, but over time, without multiple ways to be successfull it will happen.

Some of you are confused by my post and I appologize for not being clear. Perhaps I should have labled this post "How to make the PVE experience more like the PVP experience" (Interactive, no one way to win, unpredicatable) I am not advocating for the traditional model.

 

No thanks. For this just play LOTRO, WoW, CoH, DarkFall, etc...

I applaud the idea, but it is not realistic. The time constraint alone would be prohibative to having something emerge in the next 2+ years.

What you want is emergent behavior, and not some forumlaic fight like all the MMOs I mentioned.

Currently, everything I play is wack-a-mole. SO I absolutely agree on the intent, just from a programming perspective, it is an extremely tall order.[/quote]

 

I don't either. I think having a lack of competition does that.

Social interaction within a game is fine, but if that's all it is it's no longer a game. People win in games. People lose in games. I understand that some games are designed to be played more compeititively than others. I'm also a huge fan of roleplaying. But a roleplaying game, that requires more than just showing up and saying "I'm the tank. You're the hybrid caster. Let's go kill a dragon tonight!"

That's just min/maxing a fantasy social event. It's like playing pick-up video trivia in a bar. "I know world history. You know sports. Let's go win a plate of wings!" That's not a game, it's a social event. It's an ice breaker so you don't have to talk about uncomfortable real life issues that might make you rememeber your real life. It's a pastime that has no other purpuse BUT to pass the time. I would argue that SotA will be far different to large number of people.

 

The trinity is actually far older. You can likely trace it back to wargames that included healing and/or support units, before even D&D was created.

The problem, BTW, is not in the existence of the trinity; the trinity is just a logical grouping of characters that support each other and work in synergy. The real issues, IMHO, are when the game is made in such a way that the only way to play group content is to use the trinity; and when the task division in group content makes it easy for one role (typically the healer) to fix the flaws of the other roles by just overperforming, which often ends with said role being chastised for not overperforming whenever failure happens even when the other roles are the actual guilty parties for the failure.

 

Competition, by itself, does not make a game, but you could say adveristy does.

Adversity provides a challenge. Overcoming challange can overlap with the definition of a game, and one could weigh the evidence that most great games do provide challenge.

Games are defined by a set start and usually (not always here either) rules to get to the set end goal.

Not all games require competition with some external, other body.

Some games have challanges which can include competition with players and/or against players, or even with one's self, but are not required to have it to make a well defined game.

Challenges that prompt the player to think in new ways, are the root of all good games for me.

One step past the above, social interaction can be said to be a game as well. Finding your way among the many voices to achieve whatever goal you need, like getting praise from fellow members, or being elected for some event, etc...

 

The "Game of Life" is a game we all play (whether we want to or not)...Is it a zero-sum game?

 

No, it's a fantasy story-driven epic that you can choose to play with friends.

 

You have no imagination then. You can completely ignore the story and have plenty of fun playing SotA.

 

The game of life? Dost thou want to play "the game"?

 

That's a poor assumption, considering that I play D&D every weekend and played UO for 15 years, making up my own things.

Why would I want to ignore Tracy Hickman's work?

 

OK Arkhan, then I will assume you are downgrading the scope of the game to the story-driven aspect. If there wasn't a large multiplayer facet to the game, many people wouldn't be here. Portalarium wouldn't be developing player housing, a player driven economy, or player vs player combat if this wasn't an MMO. It's even more massive because everyone will be playing the same shard, creating one history. Certainly you can call it selective multiplayer, but this game is the child of UO just as much as it is the Ultimas that came before it.