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MMO creation 101


kufa

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You do not understand I am afraid. Why would you play a game that does not give you rewards of any kind? It would be like playing 'ball in a cup' everyday, guess why people are not doing that.

 

 

 

If people devote their lives to this game and are the worlds best guild with world first kills on all bosses, do you not think they deserve recognition? Once again the 'ball in a cup' example is applicable. Why would anyone want to be best at 'ball in a cup' and not spend their time on something else?

 

 

 

If you play 1 hour a week you will be rewarded accordingly and not grouped up together with the best players in the world. Why would you want to be good at something when you do not need to?

 

 

 

This is why the game needs to be designed to appeal a broader audience.

 

 

 

Are you agreeing with me here? Dynamical endgame to complement the static would appeal a broader audience.

 

 

YOu want ultra grind equals rewards. There is some grind in all MMOs but we don't need to make the hamster wheel any bigger.

 

You have to get over the fact that just because YOU put more hours in doesn't instantly equate to better gear.

The game already gives the best gear for the hardest content. That's ALREADY PART OF THE GAME.

 

By asking for more grind you are just asking for more pointless GRIND. Thats it. It accomplishes nothing. Content and "winning" should be rewarded, not grind. Grind has a purpose but its only there to give room for growth and teaching the player. Why do you think WoW devs removed attunement. IT WAS POINTLESS.

 

The best players (not the players who play the most) get the rewards. This game already appeals to a huge audience...just like WoW. Its got content for everyone from the person who just wants to level alts to the raider who wants to beat hardmodes.

 

By the way...your graph is comically wrong.

 

Players on the login screen have more rewards than those who are level 50? lol. C'mon.

Edited by Arkerus
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Where to start

 

You got the Star Wars IP and a legacy of story telling, now what? Of course you should put emphasize on the things that make you unique since that has a competitive value. But knowing that the Star Wars IP is unique by itself and that there are no other big sci fi MMOs out there truly competing with WoW puts you in a good spot without overdoing the story telling since that is expensive and will reduce the quality of other aspects of the game.

 

Before doing the game design (art design is independent) you should analyze what makes the current MMOs' features so great and use that information to make them even better and more innovative in your game. A truly great game has features that the players did not know they wanted.

 

Now we know our competitive advantage and we know what features we need to increase this advantage. We are ready to start design the game.

 

First impression

 

The first impression is very important which means that the first thing the players do in the game should not be the SAME THING they do in all other games. It should be an epic start to an epic adventure. Put a lot of effort into making it the coolest experience they have ever had in a starting zone.

 

Reward value : Time investment ratio

 

This ratio is truly bad in this game. You want to appeal a large crowd of customers and always have them longing for 'that item' that they have their eyes on. You want rewards to have a good relative 'time to get' ratio so that getting the best rewards will keep the players busy while you work on new content. Once the majority of players almost have reached their goal you release new content and repeat this cycle. You do not want to hand rewards away to easy because that narrows down the target group a lot and only keep casual players satisfied while the rest find other games to play. It is of course important that this ratio is balanced so that the casuals do not find themselves running into a to great growth of exponential commitment requirements to get 'that item' they want straight away.

 

This is what it should look like

-You do something you think is hard and are rewarded accordingly

-You are a beginner and have you fight your way to greatness

 

Reward value

| ----------------------------/

|-------------------------- /

|------------------------/

|--------------------- /

|--------------------/

|---------------- /

|-------------- /

| ---------- /

| --------/

| ----/

|/______________________________

Time invested

 

This is what SWTOR looks like

-You do something very hard and get close to nothing (e.g. no nm loot tables)

-You are a beginner and can get close to the best gear in the game within one week

-You buy the best space combat equipment off GTN and finish the hardest missions within 15min

 

Reward value

|\

|--\

| --- \

|-------\

| ---------\

|------------\

|------------- \

|----------------- \

|--------------------\

|----------------------\

|_________________\_____________

Time invested

 

Quality

 

Creating an MMO is a long time investment and the quality is vital. Be sure to release it when most aspects are done in order to keep more subscribers.

 

Leveling up

 

Sure leveling up is a great way to keep players paying, but can those 20-30 hours of boring side quests be put in more fun things? Yes, you should make leveling an epic story to the max level with new innovative ways to get experience. Keep the old kill x of y and gather x of z quests at a bare minimum.

 

End game

 

If you take those 20-30 hours of boring side quests away you need something else to account for that. Static end game was cool back in 2004, but today dynamic end game would really make the world feel more alive. Include politics, gambling, racing, space flight and combat, etc. that changes according to the choices of the players. Of course the traditional end game complements this in a good way and should be there. If you still decide to only have the traditional end game for the love of god make it good so that the competitive value is kept.

 

Communication

 

If you ever experience "we and them" you are doing it wrong. You should listen to the players and change the game the way they want to. Be honest and always keep them informed on what is going on and try to keep the confidential black box to a minimum.

 

Customer service

 

If people are complaining about the customer service you are doing it wrong. Intangible values can be greater than monetary ones.

 

Conclusion

 

I can not imagine how Bioware could fail on most of if not all of the areas mentioned above with the budget that they had. Perceived game feature value assessment, ranking and mapping to monetary value must have been ignored completely and a lot of managerial improvisation must have taken place in order to create this game. This is nothing else but managerial incompetence and irresponsibility. The formula for creating a truly great MMO that is appealing to a wide audience is not that hard but still they only manage to appeal to the casual audience because of bad and unjustified decision making.

Combination of corperate influence and a very short sighted game design . supposedly they had some very talented MMO people on their team. It seems rift got the best of the crop. that game had a far better design then TOR unfortunately .

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I don't raid. I don't find that fun. (see fun discussion above). Finding bugs here and there doesn't prove that this game somehow lacks quality. 90% of it is a quality game. You want it to be 100%...which is a strawman outlook: "If it ain't 100%, then it's crap".

 

Actually finding bugs does in fact prove the game lacks quality it boggles my mind that somehow to you it doesn't. If you bought a phone and the voice command feature didn't work you wouldn't say it lacked quality really? And this game has tons of them btw.

 

You don't raid either if I had to guess you don't even have a max level character. And whats being argued here isn't even something you take part in: the endgame. The game is quite decent during the leveling process the class stories are fairly interesting and some of the common quests are good too. The game doesn't fall flat on its face until the endgame.

 

Oh and one more thing: In MMO's like this they are all about the endgame. The leveling process is quick so naturally, that is where the player focus is.

Edited by BoomstarPrime
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I suppose that BW perhaps didn't want there to be too many gear differences. At least not to begin with.

 

Why people want grind is because they have the time for it and they want to be more powerful because of their gear and not because of their skill. If you truly feel player skill is more important then you wouldn't worry about gear so much.

 

I do agree there's not enough variation in the endgame gear however. Different areas should at least give different looking gear. Hard Mode and Nightmare should yield gear perhaps that is more intricate looking or have effects on them. This way you can stand out with your rewards without distorting the balance between players.

 

This is not a game for grinders though and for me that's great. The more hardcore players always rush and always want the best gear asap....so they can show off and feel great because others don't have it. The effort is the same for everybody at this point anyways. Yes, everybody can get geared up. My goodness what a terrible thing....

 

I just miss variation. I have no problems with everybody being able to gear up. I don't know if you've noticed but there are still plenty of undergeared 50s. Even with green items still.

 

So, you want a game where you can show off your gear and if you can't you don't feel rewarded? I don't think the problem is in the game design there.

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Uh, what? You might want to do some research. The most successful social games, from WoW to FarmVille, have intentionally introduced risk/reward and time/effort scenarios into their games to foster psychological reactions very similar to addictive play/gambling.

 

Some companies employ social scientists & shrinks in order to game human psychology as much as they can. This has little to do with nebulous & subjective concepts like "fun" and everything to do with keeping you paying into their system, either from a subscription or well known f2p models.

 

 

I've done my research, which is why I made the statement I did. Yes. Las Vegas is wildly successful. Gambling works. I said as much. But it's GAMBLING. It can induce addictive play. But that's not the only successful way to design a game...in fact, it is a singular way to design a game. And I might add, if one of the central thesis of the OPs thread is to be innovative, then introducing this gambling psychosis certainly isn't innovative, lol

 

SWTOR in fact proves that telling a good story in the gaming medium is another way to create a good, fun game.

 

Saying this makes you sound willfully naive, and if you're going to accuse someone of being an "armchair developer," then you might want to learn a little something about how games are being made these days.

 

Except that I'm not pretending to be an armchair developer. So to you, pot meet kettle.

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I've done my research, which is why I made the statement I did. Yes. Las Vegas is wildly successful. Gambling works. I said as much. But it's GAMBLING. It can induce addictive play. But that's not the only successful way to design a game...in fact, it is a singular way to design a game. And I might add, if one of the central thesis of the OPs thread is to be innovative, then introducing this gambling psychosis certainly isn't innovative, lol

 

SWTOR in fact proves that telling a good story in the gaming medium is another way to create a good, fun game.

 

 

 

Except that I'm not pretending to be an armchair developer. So to you, pot meet kettle.

 

But every MMORPG developer has bunch of psychologists to help creating addictive features and content which is most important thing, they need to hook people into playing and pay monthly subs.

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Actually finding bugs does in fact prove the game lacks quality it boggles my mind that somehow to you it doesn't. If you bought a phone and the voice command feature didn't work you wouldn't say it lacked quality really? And this game has tons of them btw.

 

You don't raid either if I had to guess you don't even have a max level character. And whats being argued here isn't even something you take part in: the endgame. The game is quite decent during the leveling process the class stories are fairly interesting and some of the common quests are good too. The game doesn't fall flat on its face until the endgame.

 

Oh and one more thing: In MMO's like this they are all about the endgame. The leveling process is quick so naturally, that is where the player focus is.

 

<sigh> This is a tired argument. MMOs, single player games, software...they all have bugs. I never said otherwise. You again are employing a strawman argument, which is intellectually and rhetorically dishonest.

 

I just reached 50lvl last night on my first character. I still won't be raiding. I don't like raiding, as I said. I'm a fairly casual gamer. As for the endgame lamenters, ask yourself this: In what game haven't you complained about engame, an endgame two months after release? If you're honest, you'll say that you always complain about endgame. The obvious conclusion from that is it's an issue with you and not an issue with the game(s).

 

And no, in MMOs like this, it ISN'T about endgame. This is a game designed for casual players. I know it's hard for some of you rabid poster to realize, but most of us play only a few hours a week. As I said, I just reached 50 lvl on one toon. I'm looking forward to bringing a few more characters through their stories as well. That's another 4 months of content for me. 4 months or more.

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<sigh> This is a tired argument. MMOs, single player games, software...they all have bugs. I never said otherwise. You again are employing a strawman argument, which is intellectually and rhetorically dishonest.

 

I just reached 50lvl last night on my first character. I still won't be raiding. I don't like raiding, as I said. I'm a fairly casual gamer. As for the endgame lamenters, ask yourself this: In what game haven't you complained about engame, an endgame two months after release? If you're honest, you'll say that you always complain about endgame. The obvious conclusion from that is it's an issue with you and not an issue with the game(s).

 

And no, in MMOs like this, it ISN'T about endgame. This is a game designed for casual players. I know it's hard for some of you rabid poster to realize, but most of us play only a few hours a week. As I said, I just reached 50 lvl on one toon. I'm looking forward to bringing a few more characters through their stories as well. That's another 4 months of content for me. 4 months or more.

 

Actually few hours per week for most aint true, MMORPG average player plays 21.7 hours a week according to studies. Average player plays few hours a day.

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But every MMORPG developer has bunch of psychologists to help creating addictive features and content which is most important thing, they need to hook people into playing and pay monthly subs.

 

Well, their employment is wasted on me, then, because I don't fall for addictive gameplay in the sense that you mean it. You won't find me on the gear hamster wheel, lol.

 

I am, however, fully invested in Story...and this is compelling (read: not synonymous with addictive) in SWTOR.

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Well, their employment is wasted on me, then, because I don't fall for addictive gameplay in the sense that you mean it. You won't find me on the gear hamster wheel, lol.

 

I am, however, fully invested in Story...and this is compelling (read: not synonymous with addictive) in SWTOR.

 

Wasted on you maybe, but to keep steady subsriction base over a long period time games need addictive hooks and thats why every sub based game has that. Afterall, majority spends lot more time at 50 than at leveling after couple of months.

Edited by Forsbacka
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I've done my research, which is why I made the statement I did. Yes. Las Vegas is wildly successful. Gambling works. I said as much. But it's GAMBLING. It can induce addictive play. But that's not the only successful way to design a game...in fact, it is a singular way to design a game. And I might add, if one of the central thesis of the OPs thread is to be innovative, then introducing this gambling psychosis certainly isn't innovative, lol

 

First, you misunderstood her thesis, which was about basic MMO development. It was about the key qualties that make a successful MMO, and how SWTOR lacks many of them, not necessarily about innovation. So GG reading comprehension there.

 

Second, I never mentioned Las Vegas and by "gambling" I didn't necessarily mean traditional games of chance. Rather that the RNG aspect of loot drops contains traditional gambling elements: that you're putting in time and effort, and maybe some skill, without a determined result, and that the traditional "carrot/stick" gear grind of MMOs is often specifically designed to trigger a certain psychological reaction from players.

 

Third, I never said this was the only way to design a game. But the fact that many companies are employing these methods on a large scale should tell you something.

 

SWTOR in fact proves that telling a good story in the gaming medium is another way to create a good, fun game.

 

You have a tendency to throw around a lot of opinion (about the success of the much vaunted SWTOR "story," about this being a "quality" game) as fact. This is a bad habit in general, but doubly so on Internet forums.

 

Except that I'm not pretending to be an armchair developer. So to you, pot meet kettle.

 

The implication in calling anyone an "armchair" anything is that they're amateur hour and you, in rebuttal, know better and operate at some kind of higher level.

 

So, yes, in fact, you did claim to be something you're very obviously not.

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If you do Hardmode FPs in SWTOR you get the second best tier pieces in the game. If you are lucky you can get all pieces in one day. Is that not a little amount of time and effort for that huge reward value?

 

Maybe you should go play Perfect World. Massive grind for minor payoff.

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Actually finding bugs does in fact prove the game lacks quality it boggles my mind that somehow to you it doesn't. If you bought a phone and the voice command feature didn't work you wouldn't say it lacked quality really? And this game has tons of them btw.

 

No, all finding bugs means is the game isn't perfect, and bugs don't necessarily equate to entire features not working.

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But every MMORPG developer has bunch of psychologists to help creating addictive features and content which is most important thing, they need to hook people into playing and pay monthly subs.

 

I reckon Swtor's psychologists, believed a Human-Npc relationship to be the most addictive part in this game..

 

Anyway there isn't imo any 101 manual for mmos.. Cause from what I heard Rift did everything well and still ended up merging servers. Of course if you compare any western/ized mmo to WoW you probably'll come to the same conclusion, that all failed. WoW of course is an anomaly as many like to call it, which is quite true.

 

Imho mmos are going downhills. People are bored and don't even know what they want from a game anymore; they always want something more but can't define what's missing. Don't think a mmo will be as successful as WoW again, not because there can't be a better one, but rather because the mechanics used in today's mmos are quite narrow minded. So people face the conflict of time investement vs fun (The usual rhetoric question is like: Why play this that is the same with that where I got x level y chars etc etc). Imho the idea of a story driven mmo was a nice twist, they needed though to have an equaly good foundation, which they obviously failed to create in some extend...

 

Still for me the game is quite fun and whatever they didnt deliver at release, they either mentioned that is coming or that it is going to be fixed. Only thing I wish is that I could play PvP at least with adequate fps on my laptop when travelling.

Edited by Silarr
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My MMO 101 not in any particular order

 

1) Heavily moderate the forums to keep trolls and complaints out. Remove forum access as soon as an account is cancelled.

2) Don't cater to hard mode gamers - they will leave with the next shiney anyways.

3) Make it easy to find groups within zones, planets, servers (not cross server)

4) Make crafting items the best in the game.

5) Bosses drop badges not gear and everyone gets one that can be traded in for gear (not better than crafted), credits, crafting mats/schematics, vanity items etc.

6) Build the players skillset around pvp - change pve encounters to accomodate pvp not the other way around because pve can be scripted, balanced and tweaked much easier than pvp encounters. Either that or have some abilities behave differently or not at all in pvp.

7) Make leveling an enjoyable process by having various ways of gaining xp.

8) Make highly customizable characters via gear dye, species choices and appearence customization.

 

This game is somewhere in the middle for me as far as ideal, but it's story driven questing and the fact it's Star wars is enough for me to keep playing.

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Where to start

 

You got the Star Wars IP and a legacy of story telling, now what? Of course you should put emphasize on the things that make you unique since that has a competitive value. But knowing that the Star Wars IP is unique by itself and that there are no other big sci fi MMOs out there truly competing with WoW puts you in a good spot without overdoing the story telling since that is expensive and will reduce the quality of other aspects of the game.

 

Before doing the game design (art design is independent) you should analyze what makes the current MMOs' features so great and use that information to make them even better and more innovative in your game. A truly great game has features that the players did not know they wanted.

 

Now we know our competitive advantage and we know what features we need to increase this advantage. We are ready to start design the game.

 

First impression

 

The first impression is very important which means that the first thing the players do in the game should not be the SAME THING they do in all other games. It should be an epic start to an epic adventure. Put a lot of effort into making it the coolest experience they have ever had in a starting zone.

 

Reward value : Time investment ratio

 

This ratio is truly bad in this game. You want to appeal a large crowd of customers and always have them longing for 'that item' that they have their eyes on. You want rewards to have a good relative 'time to get' ratio so that getting the best rewards will keep the players busy while you work on new content. Once the majority of players almost have reached their goal you release new content and repeat this cycle. You do not want to hand rewards away to easy because that narrows down the target group a lot and only keep casual players satisfied while the rest find other games to play. It is of course important that this ratio is balanced so that the casuals do not find themselves running into a to great growth of exponential commitment requirements to get 'that item' they want straight away.

 

This is what it should look like

-You do something you think is hard and are rewarded accordingly

-You are a beginner and have you fight your way to greatness

 

Reward value

| ----------------------------/

|-------------------------- /

|------------------------/

|--------------------- /

|--------------------/

|---------------- /

|-------------- /

| ---------- /

| --------/

| ----/

|/______________________________

Time invested

 

This is what SWTOR looks like

-You do something very hard and get close to nothing (e.g. no nm loot tables)

-You are a beginner and can get close to the best gear in the game within one week

-You buy the best space combat equipment off GTN and finish the hardest missions within 15min

 

Reward value

|\

|--\

| --- \

|-------\

| ---------\

|------------\

|------------- \

|----------------- \

|--------------------\

|----------------------\

|_________________\_____________

Time invested

 

Quality

 

Creating an MMO is a long time investment and the quality is vital. Be sure to release it when most aspects are done in order to keep more subscribers.

 

Leveling up

 

Sure leveling up is a great way to keep players paying, but can those 20-30 hours of boring side quests be put in more fun things? Yes, you should make leveling an epic story to the max level with new innovative ways to get experience. Keep the old kill x of y and gather x of z quests at a bare minimum.

 

End game

 

If you take those 20-30 hours of boring side quests away you need something else to account for that. Static end game was cool back in 2004, but today dynamic end game would really make the world feel more alive. Include politics, gambling, racing, space flight and combat, etc. that changes according to the choices of the players. Of course the traditional end game complements this in a good way and should be there. If you still decide to only have the traditional end game for the love of god make it good so that the competitive value is kept.

 

Communication

 

If you ever experience "we and them" you are doing it wrong. You should listen to the players and change the game the way they want to. Be honest and always keep them informed on what is going on and try to keep the confidential black box to a minimum.

 

Customer service

 

If people are complaining about the customer service you are doing it wrong. Intangible values can be greater than monetary ones.

 

Conclusion

 

I can not imagine how Bioware could fail on most of if not all of the areas mentioned above with the budget that they had. Perceived game feature value assessment, ranking and mapping to monetary value must have been ignored completely and a lot of managerial improvisation must have taken place in order to create this game. This is nothing else but managerial incompetence and irresponsibility. The formula for creating a truly great MMO that is appealing to a wide audience is not that hard but still they only manage to appeal to the casual audience because of bad and unjustified decision making.

 

 

you're silly if you think paid industry professionals don't know how to make a game, who have been doing game design for longer than you have probably been alive.

 

sure, that doesn't equate to quality. But if you had any analytic or even the slightest grasp of what their marketing/promotion campaign was saying...you'd realize they have long ago abandoned your "Classic MMORPG Grind model".

 

That is, SWTOR is trying to innovate. Though I would agree they have failed on some parts, but give SWTOR another examination once patch 1.2 comes out.

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armchair developers...lol.

 

Where to start:

BioWare did exactly what you stated. You don't like where they saw a competitive advantage so some how BW 'did it wrong.'

 

First Impression:

SWTOR does this and does it well. You personally don't like, but a huge population disagrees with you.

 

Reward value:

In other words, you're advocating triggering a gambling addiction design to this game OR a real life simulation. There's nothing in game design that says anything remotely close to what you're advocating...except those trying to invoke a gambling addiction. MMOs like Second LIfe, Tale in the Desert, or single player success stories like the SIMS prove that. Not to mention the vast majority of games that exist. A game only needs to be fun. Period.

 

Quality

BW released a quality game. YOU don't think so, but that doesn't make SWTOR a bad game.

 

Leveling

there's far more than 20-30 hours, and the questing they did implement is done in fun and unique ways. You stating the contrary doesn't make it so.

 

Conclusion

BioWare didn't fail, you're litany of untruths notwithstanding.

 

 

tl;dr: LOL @ armchair developers.

 

you know if you feed the trolls, they'll never go away..

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That is, SWTOR is trying to innovate. Though I would agree they have failed on some parts, but give SWTOR another examination once patch 1.2 comes out.

 

Apart of quests voice acting, that is new only in MMOs, tell one innovative thing in this game new to MMORPGs.

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Leaving out an good feature aint innovating. Its like leaving UI out of the game and say its innovating. You can check vid on my sig for more innovations of BW.

 

Good is an opinion.. I like the combat much better with out it.. once again just an opinion.. To say it is not innovative just because you don't happen to like it doesn't make you right.

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