Apr 26
My Ultimate MMO in Ten Bullet Points
Ryan put up a thread on the Nerfbat forums a long time ago that’s still getting traction. I keep meaning to respond but at this point my post is just going to get drowned out in the noise. Here’s the kickoff:
What 10 features would exist in your ultimate MMO? Features that currently exist and features that don’t currently exist are all fair game. Discuss. Note: You can list them all in a few words or elaborate as much as you want. I’m just interested because I know everyone has an opinion on this sort of thing.
If you have time, why don’t you drop a few bullet points of your own in the comments?
- Robust Tools for Everything - The designers should have the ability to add, modify, or tweak almost everything in the game with a minimum of code. In my imagination, internal servers should be able to be changed on the fly to try out everything from dps changes on a class to a new live event. These tools extend throughout the game’s ecology - from database interaction to additions to the website.
- A Clear Playerbase in Mind - Long before the game is even begun, the development house knows exactly who they want to play this game. Whether it’s as broad as “people who like spy movies” to “recapturing the interest of lapsed Star Wars Galaxies players”, they have a target audience in mind.
- Community Manager On Duty - This smart, funny man or woman would be on the job just about the same time that the playerbase is decided on. She’s be charged, from day one, with seeding and then growing a bunch of people who just can’t wait to get into the gameworld.
- Designers With A Firm Knowledge of the Genre - Every person on the team who gets hired had better have the background. I don’t just mean they’ve got a 70 in WoW - they’ve played everything, they’ve tried everything, they *get it*. They’ve read Bartle’s book, Jessica’s Book, Raph’s book. They have a theory on what went wrong with the NGE. They can tell you how they would have tried to save Asheron’s Call 2 or Auto Assault.
- Designers Without Ego - These knowledgeable designers are willing to look at a solved issue and leave it the fuck alone. They’re willing to recognize the fundamental perfection of ‘player housing’ in the Sims 2, the wisdom of Guild Wars’ art design, or the sheer amount of polish observable in just about every WoW system. Instead of going “how can we fundamentally redo questing”, they’ll ask themselves “okay, what would make something really great *even* better?”
- A Company That Listens - The designers, community manager, developers, producers, and managers are *required* to follow the viewpoints of the playerbase. Even if they’re the most idiotic ass-backwards mouthbreathing ideas they’ve ever heard, everyone in the company has to know what the community thinks about features X, Y, and Z. It doesn’t matter if player ideas are ever implemented, or even considered; the fact that the company knows what the players want can inform them on what they’re doing right and what they’re doing wrong.
- A Game For Players - Instead of building a hermetically sealed game that only works one specific way, the company builds a game that works the way the players want it to. This game offers multiple layers of interaction, from the very casual all the way up to the extraordinarily hardcore. Every one of them is a polished experience. Players who want to tackle one segment of your content exclusively are allowed to do that. Players who want to swallow the whole the gameworld can do that too.
- Courage in the Marketplace - The game offers a pricing structure that fits the player’s style of play, rather than a one-size-fits-none approach. If the player wants to drop a monthly fee that give him all-access, let him. If a player wants to pay by the hour, let him. Offer microtransactional additions to the game and - for serious - consider the possibility of just selling your in-game currency straight across for cash.
- No Server Bullshit - Have a single world. I know it’s hard, deal with it. If you have to have multiple servers, let slipping between them be as effortless as logging in. Ship with the idea that the in-game economy is one continuous stream across all shards, and design accordingly. Let nothing stand in the way of players getting together with one another.
- A Setting With Meaning - Whether it’s fantasy, sci-fi, pirates, underwater, outer space, inner space, horror, modern, gritty, shiny, or just plain weird, have a setting that speaks to people. Don’t just do something because it sounds cool - think it through on a human level. What are the motivations of the major players? Are their actions believable? Why is your setting the way it is today? Ask yourself “What would Ron Moore do?” If the answer is “spit on my shitty setting”, rethink things.
9 Comments so far
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[...] Posted April 28, 2008 Michael Zenke, being his usual self, wrote another excellent post describing his ten points that would make the perfect MMO. I agree with almost every point he [...]
Only piece I disagree with is #9 about the servers. I don’t think most games should try for one server. The only way to make a game like WoW or EQ a single server would be to make a whole lot terrible content and crappy looking areas. Space games and niche games are perfect for single shards, though. As far as simple transfer across shards, I would agree with that in some games, not in others.
On #4 I basically agree. They have to understand the genre and how to create a great game, absolutely. They don’t have to read all those books. I’ve read them, and at this point reading most of them is a waste of time because I’ve either read the information somewhere else or I have direct relevant experience.
You almost lost me at #6 until I realized you weren’t saying to directly implement everything players wanted, but just that you know what they DO want and what their opinions are.
Anyway, great list.
#4 - You had me and then you lost me. See Shwayder’s comment above on the general value of academia.
#6 - Disagree. Key people absolutely do need to pay attention to community feedback, but the average team members needs to focus on their task list, not worry about message board debates. Some people can involve themselves in that level without being distracted, but some can’t. It shouldn’t be a requirement that they try. Their direction from above should be taking all that into account.
Apart from those quibbles, I agree.
#6 Agree.
User Acceptance is very important in Software Development. This is not to suggest that each developer / designer needs to wade through the forums. There are many other ways for End User feedback/issues can be feed through to your development team.
A developer / designer should be interested in the way his/her work was received by the end user, if it’s being used as intended and if his/her work was fit for purpose.
[...] steal from Zonk today, this time indirectly. He has a blog post about his ultimate MMO in ten bullet points. Bullet point #9 is pretty [...]
Some further comments on single server stuff in response to Grimwell’s post. He essentially suggested going with a Toontown or City of X style of instancing (keep the world shared, but make as many instances as needed to accommodate for everyone).
If you are okay with zones, then you can do that. I don’t like zones, I like seamless worlds (World of Warcraft). City of Heroes handled their world instancing the same way that Toontown did, and personally I didn’t like it. In fact, EverQuest II creates instances of overland zones when necessary.
It’s an okay solution for zoned worlds, but it’s not even an option on the table for seamless worlds.
I also believe it screws with the community. There’s a bunch of research on what the maximum “community” size is (as perceived by a single person), and it isn’t a million. It’s not even 100,000. It’s generally below 1000.
If there are 1,000,000 or, more realistically for the average successful MMO, 250,000 players on one “server” (instanced set of zones), there’s no way you’re going to know most of those people.
There’s little benefit gained from cramming so many people on one server, especially because they’ll just form their own little micro-communities anyway because people will intentionally want to segregate themselves from those overwhelming numbers.
It’s not without benefits, though. You can be more likely to ensure that there are enough people around to form groups, especially for group-based dungeon crawls and the like. This is a good thing.
New players will always feel part of a community of some sort, because there will always be people around even if they are soloing (there’s a lot of proximity benefit to having other people around, even if you never interact with them verbally or physically in any way).
On the server question.
I think separate servers are good as long as users have the opportunity to seamlessly switch servers. In other words your game might have 10 servers all hosting the same world but the player can switch to any server at any time. better than a single world because the players can manage population problems and better than instancing because it’s still a world and not a private area (which I prefer). DAoC type clustering is what I’m thinking of here.
[...] gotten LOTS off feedback on my Bullet Point List, which I am not too surprised about. I jotted it off in a hurry, probably should have thought more [...]
[...] to support a few thousand people at peak, which is a relatively manageable community. As much as I love the idea of a serverless ecosystem, if we’re going to have a micro-world why not make use of it by bringing people together in a [...]