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Should MMORPGs offer "individualized" experiences?
Creslin321
Posts: 5,359Member
So one of the big trends in post-WoW MMORPGs has been offering a "individualized" experience for each player. In other words, you progress through the game completing objectives that are associated with YOU and no one else. For example, if you have a quest to destroy an idol of power owned by a beastman shaman, then YOU have to destroy the idol. If someone else destroyed the idol, it has no effect on your quest and the story of the game, it's like it never happened.
When you think about it, standard "WoW-esque" quests are very analogous to instances. Each player has their own instance of a quest that is unaffected by any other instances of the same quest floating around. So they are basically "instanced quests."
This allows games to deliver a story-based progression through the game very similar to a single player RPG. It makes it so the player can feel "special," like he or she is the hero. But a big problem I have with this is that these individualized "instanced quests" can be very isolating. Each player in these games (while leveling) is working on their own individual instanced quests and is usually completely either completely oblivious to or mildly annoyed by the presence of other players.
In my experience, games with instanced quests play very much like single player games while you are questing (which is typically the majority of the game). If you want to play with another player while questing then unless you are on the EXACT same quests (which is rare), playing together is counter-productive.
I always saw this as a huge problem. If you find that you spend 98% of your time in an MMORPG playing single player, then something is wrong. MMORPGs should be about being a part of a world that affects everyone. They should not be about 5000 people running around a world completely oblivious to one another as they all go through their own personal instance of the storyline.
So anyway, what are your thoughts on this? Should MMORPGs continue down this path of individualized experiences? Or is it ultimately bad for the genre?
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Comments
I think by allowing MMOs to become linear and 'single player'esqe the developers are letting slip the huge advantage that these games have over single player games; the social interaction between players. I think that they just haven't figured out how to tap into this in order to enchance gameplay enough, and so they continue to recreate what has already been done and is safe.
Play as your fav retro characters: cnd-online.net. My site: www.lysle.net. Blog: creatingaworld.blogspot.com.
Yeah I always have felt this too. It seems like a lot of developers look at an MMORPG and view the "MMO" portion of the game as a difficulty rather than an asset. They try to think of ways to make an MMORPG offer a single player experience while still remaining an MMORPG. But this is kind of missing the point IMO.
Anyway, as to solving this issue. I think that WAR had a potentially great innovation with Public Quests, but it was implemented very poorly. My hope is that GW2 will be able to refine this concept with their Dynamic Events and make them a new staple of MMORPGs
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Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
"Should be" is an extraordinarily tricky phrase that can easily lead you into all kinds of logical quagmires.
To the author's credit, he turns it into a question, asking opinions rather than issuing pronouncements. Bravo.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
I don't really see it as a path per se, SW:TOR can get away with it because of the huge budget, but not every or nearly as many games will be able to offer this kind of back story to the characters in their world.
Personally I think that some single player sections are needed for a lot of today's mmo's. As I get older and my opinion changes I tend to stray away from the desire to play with more and more people and just narrow my time spent on games to people I know, trust and enjoy the company of.
If I'm not playing with my group of friends from 10 years or my wife, I'd prefer to play single player. And when I say single player I mean still an MMO, just solo, I prefer games that do not end and allow me to focus time on constant progression instead of after 30-100 hours finishing and then saying to myself "What next?"
I enjoy solo play and sometimes I literally avoid people, but that's just me, I know a lot of people would ask why i would even play an MMO at all.
Normally I don't like instanced games but SW:TOR seems to be a little bit more about Roleplay and setting up a good roleplaying experience than most MMO's, and I'm fine with that.
Personally I think SW:TOR's imminent success and individual story lines will eventually change the genre. Publishers will see the success of it and instead of throwing a buttload of money at a new game will try to re-invent the wheel so they can also get a piece of the MMO pie. Lots of games that can no longer compete will close. And to quote Martha Sterwart "It's a good thing."
If you can't beat em, design a new way to compete. Isn't that what helps drive innovation and future developments? The story based games coming out will lead a new wave of games and only time will tell what that wave will consist of. I just know the level of quality expected is being raised and once again "It's a good thing."
Wouldn't every quest have to be public quests? How would dungeons be handled?
I feel quest based gameplay will never provide the exact experience you guys are looking for. I know it can suck to team up with some one that is behind in quests, but I thought teaming with people was the whole point of playing with others. We should have the choice to team up with other players or not, but quests facilitate a pattern of play. Players in that pattern have a hard time going back to repeat what they've already done or coordinate with a team to complete the objective. WHen I see this I see either the arguement of being anti-social or effeciency in xp gain.
So let's say they take out questing or make questing negligible for experince gain. Would anyone do the quests rather than grind the faster way (by killing, crafting, etc.)? I know I would go the faster route and only do the quest when I did not feel like grinding or after I've maxed out the character. And in that situation how easy would it be to get a group to do them? Probably not easy enough.
Also for example, even though Counter-strike is considered a multiplayer game, I can still play it solo even among the other players. I don't communicate, I do my own thing win or lose.
That's just how I feel with these types of conversations about single and multiplayer expereinces. For me it is really about how I play the game rather than what it is labeled as.
"If you're going to act like a noob, I'll treat you like one." -Caskio
Adventurers wear fancy pants!!!
I think that in some ways it's acceptable, but in other ways it needs to be put into moderation.
When I used to play WoW I thought it was fun in a way because it made you feel like you were actually changing the outcomes by yourself and it sort of makes you feel like the hero of the story.
Also though the whole point of a mmorpg is to connect to other players, and at times in WoW (especially playing an undead) it felt like I was the only one in the game (I know it's because it's such a huge game-world partly).
There should be group efforts and quests in ALL mmorpgs so you can make friends and have fun.
Smile
Geez. With the two of you posting, is there any reason for me to add anything? Not really, but that rarely slows me down these days.
Interactivity is a huge asset of an MMO game. But actually, I think the players are the ones pushing the game industry towards the Persistent World Shared Gaming experience we see in place of an MMORPG. EQ1 was initially very friendly, and only a few classes were capable of functioning as solo characters. Everyone and their brother had an alt druid or necro so they could play too, or complained bitterly that 'Class X can't solo'. Indeed, in the very early days, it was difficult for most classes to survive outside the newbie areas unless they were in a group.
But people didn't want to group. They saw (or imagined) penalties on grouping, both in terms of experience and loot, and didn't understand the improved killing rate of a group. But the early mana-regeneration issues coupled with a designed inequity of healing cut into the advantages of the grouping experience. So, the game itself encouraged players to attempt to solo, simply because the days of pick-up groups in West Karana saw the advent of serious down-time once your healing team ran out of mana. The combination of inequitable healing ability, slow mana regeneration and the XP penalties essentially forced many players to attempt to solo. And the players soloed.
No game has successfully recaptured the early EQ days, because the developers enable their games to allow players to solo. Players became enticed by the solo quests as the path to leveling. In response to the players desires, most games simply don't make content that requires a casual group of characters to complete the task. Players will wait a level or two, then solo the older content. The only places where that doesn't happen is where a given opponent is totally unbalanced to the character's level. Ten level 10 characters can't kill the mob; they need 9 level 10s and 1 level 65 to essentially solo the mob.
I really liked the communal quests Warhammer, except for one factor. There was never any incentive for players to communicate with one enouther. And talking is the fundamental (and easiest) method of interacting with another character that can be incorporated into a game. The Warhammer Public Quests (and I never got past the demo stages), essentially turned into a bunch of characters soloing the same things at the same time. The rewards for these Public Quests encouraged competition with a 'ranking' list. And all it valued was damage done or damage healed. Characters who contributed in other ways (buffs and crowd control) were simply undervalued.
Anyway, I'm all for encouraging players to play a game. But to me, an MMORPG requires a certain degree of social interaction, and most players seem to prefer to play in isolation. If given a way to play solo, a majority of players will treat the game as a solo experience.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
I would also like to add, for all those who claim that EQ forced group play, well it did, but there was a monority who did in fact solo. I was one of them during raiding downtime who did. And when Plane of Mischief was released it opened a haven for serious solo'ers to enjoy their pastime.
But grouping was still the preferred method for most of the players. Still some people did actually solo.
what about a "community quest" giver or something like that. It would give optional quests like "help another players with 5 quests" or some other thing like that. If you end up helping with quests you've already completed you wouldn't get item rewards for them, but you could lets say get the monitary, and exp rewards again. This would make players that have more of a helpful mentality able to assist in quests. You can either help 1 guy 5 times, or 5 guys 1 time or whatever, but it's up to you how you split it. I'm sure there would be plenty of other things you could do under this system, but this is an idea that just came to me while reading this post so it's got no flesh to it yet.
I think in order for games to really embrace and take full advantage of the MMO part of MMORPGs they need to move towards building and away from leveling. When the focus is on getting the highest level, it does incorporate multiplayer in making the game fun because players feel driven to play due to their competitive nature. But the real gem in multiplayer gaming is engaging the creativity of players to enchance the experience for all other players.
To do this the world needs to be more dynamic, though, for sure. And lets just lay our cards on the table: I am thinking of pre-CU SWG. Most of the enjoyment I got out of that game had nothing to do with the game itself, but it was thanks to the other players. The game was just a shell for players to express themselves and engage each other in a number of different ways. When you allow players to create their own experiences for themselves and other players not only do you find that content is unlimited (because it is based on the players not the developers) but the content is more real: It is no longer a movie/facade scripted by a developer, it is now a breathing world that is created by the community, including each player. Having bore the child that is this games world, players will feel more attached to the game and their character (and since it is more community based, players will also be more attached to their friends in the game). I think this is where the next generation of MMORPGs will take us.
We have seen it done by some smaller developers, but lets face it, small developers usually fall short of really wowing the industry. A bigger developer is needed to take on the challenge and be sucessful, and I think we will see a whole new genre of mmorpg blossom. Probably in 5-10 years. I think that MMORPGs were moving it in that direction around the time of SWG, but with the release of WoW and linear 'theme-park' games like it, the shift has been back towards making single player games and games based on competetive leveling/progression. Part of that is the economic recession that has been encouraging developers to avoid risk.
I think it is coming though and I really am looking forward to it. We get little hints with games like GW2. I think they know what is coming next they are just too nervious to take the step and instead tack on dynamic content in a linear world. In order to take advantage fully of the social aspect of MMORPGs however, the world needs to be completely dynamic. I think the problem with games like GW2 is that they are scared to be 'missing' features that are found commonly in MMORPGs, such as emphasis on classes, gear progression, and pre-scripted quests. If this is 'missing' from a MMORPG, these companies think that that MMORPG will fail. So they spend 99% of their budget making their game like WoW and only have 1% left over to be creative. It is enough to make some $$ and a decent game, but not to take the next step in moving this genre forward.
I am looking forward to GW2, but not especially because of dynamic events, which will probably be a fun little add-on but not a game changer. I am mostly looking forward to GW2 because I have come to expect generally enjoyable PvE and PvP gameplay from ArenaNet, as well as breathtaking graphics, and they seem to be delivering on another quality game that raises the bar on linear MMORPGs a little higher. But what I really want is a game that takes the bar, smashes it to bits, and says 'lets start something new'.
Play as your fav retro characters: cnd-online.net. My site: www.lysle.net. Blog: creatingaworld.blogspot.com.
What are you talking about? Nearly all modern MMO's DO offer individualized experiences. This is why they suck and shouldn't even be called MMO's.
... isn't that what he said? Or am I retarded? >.<
It's damn scary that SWTOR not only offers a personal storyline but an NPC companion, a 'love interest', no less.
Does that mean I'm asking devs to force us to hang out, pal around, to be more social in their MMOs? Hell no. I know why things are trending this way, and it's not the developers' faults. It's our collective fault. The community isn't a community at all. Maybe it was crazy to ever think we could be.
We're strangers, we aren't in each others real lives, in each others houses. In each others faces. There is no eye contact, no body language, most of the time, between most of us, not even tone of voice to go by. Maybe that's why so many of us aren't very adept at playing well with others. Oh, don't get me wrong, I never was very social, but there are plenty who are quite 'social' in games, in one sense anyway, but in another sense, they're more sociopaths than social butterflies, manipulating, controlling, taking over, putting others down.
Or maybe it's not because we don't know each other in real life that we can't create a healthy and sustainable virtual community. Maybe it's the nature of people who play MMOs. Or maybe it's that the nature of people in general is changing. Or maybe this technology is just allowing us to be what we've always wanted to be anyway. Maybe it's a little bit of all of these, and more besides.
Scary. Nothing can be done about it, though. Well, not until we hit Snowcrash tech and devs get really fantastic at facial expressions, among other things. That might help, some. Or maybe not.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
Nope, you're not retarded...that's what I said
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Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
A lot of great discussion and replies so far everyone! I feel like this is a pretty major issue and I enjoyed reading all of your responses.
Anyway, I wanted to bring up something that was bothering me as I read some of the posts here.
It seems that many folks draw a "hard-line" between grouping or single player. In other words, you are either in a group, or you are playing single player. As such, ALL soloing would essentially be single player.
I really disagree with this.
IMO, you are only playing "single player" when the MMO aspect of the game is either not affecting your experience at all (solo instancing) or is affecting your experience in an extremely mundane way (waiting in a "line" for your turn at the quest objective). If you are solo and the other players are affecting your experience in a fairly MAJOR way, then you are NOT playing single player. Examples of this would be:
1. PvP (obviously)
2. Informal grouping - LIke Rift events, public quests, or dynamic events. You may not be actively grouped with anyone in the traditional sense, but the presence of other players is very critical to your performance in the event and your experience in general.
3. Player driven world dynamism - Mouthful I know. But what I'm referring to is when the actions of another player affect the world in a way that YOU can experience. Examples of this would be open-world housing (UO, SWG), dynamic events, or player driven territorial control. This stuff mainly shows up in sandbox games, but even some theme park games (GW2) are starting to experiment with it.
So my point here is that you don't have to "force" players to group in order to have a real MMORPG. You just have to stop making content that is instanced for each player, whether it be quests or zones, or whatever.
If developers start "tying" their content to the WORLD instead of to individual players (i.e. dynamic events etc.) then I really don't think you would feel so isolated when you play. Instead of just pursuing your own personalized goals when you play, your goals would constantly intertwine with the goals of other players.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
I think the question being asked is the wrong question.
Whether an MMORPG should offer XYZ mechanics is irrelevant.
What it should offer is a FUN experience.
Group, Solo, instances, open world etc doesn't matter. Games are ultimately an entertainment media.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
I think we all want something that is fun for us, but "fun" is a subjective term, and I think a lot of us look for different kinds of fun in different places.
I love single player RPGs but that's not really the experience I want from an MMORPG. It's kind of like this....
Imagine that you love FPS games and you love action games. But all of a sudden, all the action games that come out really start to resemble FPS's. You may still play the games because you like FPS's, but you would probably miss that old action game feel that you liked so much.
Also, I know for me personally that while I enjoy current MMORPGs, I feel like there are a lot of problems with them that shouldn't just be ignored. "Fun" is the ultimate goal, but saying a game should be "fun" offers no real concrete direction. It's like saying "games should be good."
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
A technically bad game is a technically bad game no matter what the mechanics are.
Mechanics are at the end of the day a game design that is suppose to make a certain playerbase feel XYZ.
If providing individualized experiences make lots of people feel 'this is fun' then that mechanic ultimately succeeded in its intention.
Whether someone fits that criteria is up to that individual.
I don't care for Jazz, but I perfectly understand that's due to my taste in music.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.