5punk

I am starting to write one of my very infrequent blog posts and one of my very frequent rants, I wanted to get input from you guys.
We've played a lot of MMOs (I'm counting FPS like Planetside here as well) and we have seen the mistakes that developers make time and again, like:

1. Every MMO that includes dungeon content should includ a LFG tool. Standing around spamming chat is not a good way to spend the afternoon.
2. Elevators should move SLOWER than a player falls.
3. You will get the number of servers incorrect, some will be empty - transfers should be available very soon after release.
4. ALL BADGERS HAVE ARSES - I can accept that I might have brutalised it a bit too much and therefore cannot use the odd badger arse for my quest, but only 1 out of 5 badgers having arses is taking the piss.
5. If they wear heavy armour they do little damage, if they have light armour they do lots. Balance you fuckwits!
etc, etc...

So, what are your gripes about MMOs that should be avoided by future MMOs?

1. Running is fun. We should all be encouraged to run across the entire world on foot to promote eWeight loss.
2. All NPC quest givers are sound of body and mind, just too fucking idle to collect badgers' arses themselves, so they naturally expect the Chosen One to do it for them.
3. Swimming is easy. You can happily swim over a 50 foot waterfall in full plate armour.
4. Every MMO should involve at least 25 levels of non-stop grinding to ensure people who have got to the max level actually deserve it.

6. Grind is not the same thing as extra content or extended play time. Making us do the same thing over and over just so we play for longer is not good design. Give us the choice to do something else for a bit, that's not on another continent.

7. I was going to say get rid of quest hubs and let things happen organically, or randomly, like GW2 tries to do. However I'm not sure it's entirely a good thing. It's nice that everyone gets their own unique game story, but not so great when you're asking for help or trying to explain how you did stuff. It seems to work well enough in Skyrim though, with plenty of help from guides around that get around this issue.

8. Have at least as many character customisation options as the superhero games. Boob slider for both sexes. And don't let me spend two hours choosing my costume only to have it replaced in the first quest by the same brown clothes every other newbie is running around in.

9. Let me customise my mounts as well, like it's Need for Speed meets My Horse and Me.

10. Do something different for fucks sake. Enough with the Elves already!

11. Have a crafting system I can understand and which I actually want to use.

12. Listen to your players, and not just the shouty pricks in the forums. Allow the silent majority to easily submit feedback on what they want in the game.

13. Make me part of the story, and other people's stories. Let me participate in major events, even act out the parts of characters in other people's stories. If you have to have cutscenes make sure I'm all over them like it's a singleplayer game.

Travel should be fun (like in CoH), quick (like in GW2) or ideally both. If I have to spend a lot of time slowly moving through uninteresting terrain, and the only input required by me to so is to press the forward button, you are doing it wrong.

Combat is probably going to provide the bulk of the gameplay, so make it fun. Standing still pressing number keys in a set order whilst nothing visually stimulating happens is not fun.

A lot of the game will probably be travelling, and the bits where you are not travelling are probably mostly combat, but one thing that we will be doing at all times is controlling the game (if we aren't, then stop what you are doing and start designing again). Make the controls easy to use. The fact that your controls are innovative doesn't mean shit if your innovations make me feel like im playing Twister with my fingers.

Allow me to see as much or as little information as I want. Allow me to have as many or as few buttons on the GUI as I want. In fact, just let me do whatever the fuck I want with the GUI.

People often say that MMO's only really get good at the end game. This is moronic. Its another way of saying "a lot of the content of this game is filler". Most people never see the end game, and those that do have to see all of the rest of your game first. Make it all good.

Crafting can and should be more interesting than "make 200 daggers. You can now make a sword. Make 200 of them to unlock axes".

I have never played any pen and paper roll playing game that required me to X any number of Y's. Make quests better than this.

For MMO graphics, design is more important than technical achievement. Amazing dynamic lighting, but a world that looks like a bunch of Realdolls being wheeled around in cardboard boxes is infinitely less nice to look at than 5 year old tech driving an interestingly designed world.

For the love of god, hire decent writers to do your dialogue. Please.

I'll probably think of some more at some point. Probably whilst playing TSW.

I'll start mine from 1 so I can tout my own personal gripes.

1. Individuality
People spend a while designing their characters, and nobody else ever cares. The fact that only the player cares about it should make a character's appearance even more important, since they're the ones staring at it for hours on end. So please allow people to customise their appearances. The apex of this are the superhero MMOs, which let you completely configure your appearance to the point where you're creating crazy new species. The very minimum should be what WoW now does, allowing you to make one piece of kit with nice stats look like another one you like the look of. If you can go online and find out exactly what your character will look like at max level you're doing it wrong.

2. Quests
It goes without saying really, but I'll reiterate what others have said. Make them interesting. Make them hard and thought provoking if need be, but being sent out into a field to kill a bunch of the same monster, then come back again, is not something that will have me renewing my subscription. It might make the game longer, but we won't want to play it. SWTOR did the story missions really well then fucked it up by filling in the gaps with grind padding. I played for less than a month. While we're at it, if you're going to make me go out into the dangerous world to do something, don't make me come back before sending me back out again to kill the same shit again.

3. Movement
Already covered above, but I've a few things to add. We'll be spending a lot of time moving about the world, and moving into and around new areas is fun and interesting as we explore. Going backwards and forwards across it while having to fight wild animals every ten feet is not fun and interesting and will make me not want to travel. Remember that travelling is only a means to an end so that we can do something interesting, so make it convenient. CoH actually made it fun, which is a bonus. WAR got it completely wrong.

Those are the only essential ones. Some things that are also good though:

PvP
Meaningful open PvP in designated areas is fun. WAR got it spot on - PvP areas were open and expansive. You could hunt enemy players or try to sneak around them, you weren't forced into a ten minute long gankfest. Eve also gets it right, but in a more hardcore sense. That isn't for everyone, but the principle of PvP fights happening because the players have an organic reason to fight is probably the best PvP design out there. Arena based PvP is often confusing and frustrating, and usually very artificial, unless you're well practised at it.

Aggro range
Someone please change this system. It's instrumental in the proliferation of Bad Habit #3 (above), and completely abstract. I'd rather have a quiet jog to a bad guy's camp then have the whole lot on alert and attacking. This isn't to say that it has to be completely scrapped, but make the monsters react in more interesting ways. Does anyone really enjoy fighting something only to accidentally aggro a wandering pal and get ganked.

Crafting
What Joose said. Grinding crafting is as fun as grinding XP. Which is to say not fun at all, especially when you immediately scrap it again.

Groups
Make it invisible. I don't want to talk to randoms, but I'm happy to tag along with one and help out. I might then strike up a conversation afterwards, but then again I might not. WAR started off well on this, Rift did well with the invasions. More like that please.

Roles
Why not make it so that people can diversify and fill multiple roles? Most people will level up as DPS because it's easy to solo. Having to start a new character then grind your way to the top so you can play a tank might have worked for WoW, but it doesn't make the grade any more. Why not let you max out a third of the way through the game, then spend the rest of it adding more and more strings to my bow so that by the time I finish the solo PvE content I can play a variety of roles in group activities? Honestly, I'll probably play longer in the end.

Escort quests with a slow, weak and annoying escort - no.

There's not a single thing raised I disagree with here.

friznit wrote: 2. All NPC quest givers are sound of body and mind, just too fucking idle to collect badgers' arses themselves, so they naturally expect the Chosen One to do it for them.

Which makes me add:

You can't have a world full of chosen ones, clearly you are lying to somebody.

Refreshingly, a recent MMO actually went out of its way to say that you are "not the fucking chosen one, you are just another soldier"

It is absurd that everyone is the chosen one, but good stories aren't told around faceless grunts that nothing ever happens to. You just being present, maybe having helped a little when the important stuff happens is more realistic, but this is also fraught with problems:

If these scenes are repeatable, or public-viewable they end up being a mummer's parody of what they are supposed to be - like some Punch and Judy show, endlessly repeating. However if they are random events that may only occur a few times, then a lot of players will never get to see them.

However, I'm rather missing the point by talking about set scenes in MMOs, because they're MMOs. Scenes should be spontaneous and player-generated.

1. Microtransactions (and middlishtransactions), Subscriptions. PICK ONE.

I'm looking at you here blizzard. Right now you can spend €130 on in game pets/mounts for wow, it costs between £10 and £20 to do basic, automated character actions (server transfers and suchlike) this is on top of the £50 to purchase the game and expansions to the current point. and your £9/mo subscription.

In my humble opinion, if you're going down the subscription model, the games should be pretty fucking cheap (subsidised by the subscription) and have the basic actions required to enjoy the game for free, but potentially on a time limit (ie. once a month)

Or, go down the microtransaction route, and make your money with reasonable fees.

Both shouldn't happen, treat your customers nicely.

2. Don't try to be a wow beater, you'll fail, then blizzard will steal your ideas.

3. Do something different, I'm more likely to pick up a steampunk game where you fist transsexual dinosaurs to death than yet another wow clone.

4. Less badgers, more arses. all badgers should have at least 3 arses.

5. Introduce multiple instances of a zone during busy periods. CoH did this nicely, if an area was packed you could go into a separate instance of it, it's a little immersion breaking, but less so than having to fight with 500 other players all waiting for the mechabadger at the end of a quest line to kill for a drop.

6. Allow different level players to group together without too much trouble, again CoH was good for this, allowed for teamwork and fun evenings without having to pay too much attention to what other people were doing.

7. Fast travel should be fast, readily available and easy to find. AoC and (I think) WAR were pretty shit for this.

8. Better names, I'd like a fucking custom title, High Admiral Berk, lord of the badgers will do nicely thankyoueverymuch.

9. Block people from global chat channels for 6 hours play time, or until they've learned how the chat system works.

10. Boob/Bulge slider, on males and females.

I agree with the subscription thing, If you're going to be subbed, don't do micro transactions and rip off customers.

Also feel that servers should be more age related because I'm basically getting pissed off with hearing "can you run me through BRD because i'm 9 and can't do it and my dad is busy and I want to tank EVERYTHINGALLATONCEANDNOTDIE!" Either that or have the option of age related servers and a few mixed ones for the parentals who wish to actually play with their children instead of palm them off on the nearest best geared player who looks more capable of shit than they are.

Also, what REALLY gripes me is the legendary system thing in WoW. You have to get 20million of x to complete the legendary item, which people work hard to get, and I understand that, but, due to the lengthy period of raiding required, either more should drop, OR, there should be one item required for each character available to/on that quest. This would stop much griping and bitchiness.

* Don't design an end game.

EvE probably the best example of this, but there's no designed end game, and it works wonderfully because of it.

I might be turning into a fanboy, but reading this and the game-that-shall-not-be-mentioned thread, most of the points mentioned I find myself thinking "GW2 fixes that!" or at least changes it enough. It'll have its own mistakes but I think most people will find it a refreshing experience. Well, except for the (beautiful) fantasy setting.

Thompy wrote:I might be turning into a fanboy, but reading this and the game-that-shall-not-be-mentioned thread, most of the points mentioned I find myself thinking "GW2 fixes that!" or at least changes it enough. It'll have its own mistakes but I think most people will find it a refreshing experience. Well, except for the (beautiful) fantasy setting.

Agreed. It's far from flawless, but it does manage to at least miss the common mistakes. Even the fantasy world is at least not just another elves/dwarves/orcs cut and paste job.

GW2 Does indeed avoid many of the pitfalls most games blunder into.

I think what we need is:

Superhero game customisation
TSW armour/item system
GW2 questing
GW2/CoH traveling
Need for speed meets my horse and me
SWTOR personal story quests
WoWs LFG tool
WARs PvP

Anery wrote:GW2 Does indeed avoid many of the pitfalls most games blunder into.

I think what we need is:

Superhero game customisation
TSW armour/item system
GW2 questing
GW2/CoH traveling
Need for speed meets my horse and me
SWTOR personal story quests
WoWs LFG tool
WARs PvP

Can we also make it suck me off and call me Daddy at the same time?
That would be super.

It also needs the stunning good looks and visceral and somewhat involved combat of aids of conan.

And possibly the player created villages with whores and chickens.

Soonarmar wrote:Can we also make it suck me off and call me Daddy at the same time?
That would be super.

Do you not have a daughter?

And big stompy robots, miniguns, and nukes.

Dog Pants wrote:And big stompy robots, miniguns, and nukes.