What Innovations Do You Want?
"Lets NOT just copy WoW"
The problem with a lot of MMOs post-WoW is that they try to play it too safe. They bank on a set of traditional and proven features and don’t really push the boat out through innovation any more. A lot of us are noticing this and whilst some games such as Warhammer Online and Champions Online are starting to introduce some exceptionally innovative systems now, what about our new Star Wars MMO? What areas of an MMO do you think need more innovation?
This article will just muse on a few thoughts regarding some of the top line systems in an MMO.
The Progression System:
Do you want a new skill based system? Or perhaps a change to the existing level based system.
Personally I’d like to see something totally new. Something that focuses on the development of your character rather than you just climbing the steps of the game. This would include elements from the skills systems found in SWG and EVE but with more focus on your character’s individual story. I want choices presented to me throughout the game that shape my character. Instead of picking a class or a skill set i want to be thrown into an open progression quest and forced to make my own call with my actions determining what elements my character takes on board and uses.
The Quest System:
Do you want BioWare’s MMO to innovate by supporting a large range of different types of quests and missions? Do you want more focus on personal quests that can be shared with others? Or perhaps no quests at all? Just an open world where quests are based on what events you find in the gameworld.
For me i want to see the best elements of other MMOs, particularly those of WAR (which seems to have the most innovative takes on traditional quest systems to date) with another quest element all together focused around my first point (character development). Public Quests for me are one of the best innovations in a long time so those are a must to replace raiding. Id like to see standard quests too but linked to a light vs dark tally system so your actions or quests you complete move you closer towards one extreme.
PvP & RvR:
Do you want a new open world PvP system building upon the RvR elements of MMOs? Do you want specific zones/planets designed entirely for PvP? Or perhaps a new duelling system that focuses more on your characters choices of battles rather than PvP specifically?
This is always a difficult topic to discuss as more often than not you get the sides (like and don’t like) just calling each other carebears and l33t gankers. To be honest it shows the maturity of both sides when that happens. There are those that would love no PvP in a game and those that would love FFA open world PvP, and you cant please both entirely.
So with that I’d like a PvP system that supports a new factional warfare system (highlighted next) bringing players of opposing factions together on predetermined battlefields with tangible (in a game sense) rewards for serving your chosen faction. I don’t really like scenarios or instanced battlegrounds as i think they dilute the whole war theme of MMOs. They shut you off away from the gameworld in an arena. Because of that i would choose to focus more on open world (in war zones) RvR/PvP than instances. I would still like some but for me, i would rather have more development time spent on making the war zones incredible and massive scale than just making more instances.
On top of those, i would like innovation to come in the form of story content but provided in a PvP environment in a staged system (ill talk about this in another post later today).
Factions:
Do you want separate gameworlds for each faction with people only meeting in war zones? Do you want open world RvR to go game wide so players control all city alignments? Or do you want to see more innovation in the factions themselves with players controlling all aspects of the faction like a large guild?
For me, i want to see lots of innovation to the factional system. I want to see factions going against rival factions, guilds going to war with each other in great alliances and combat systems designed to support factional warfare. These systems would allow guilds and alliances to give ranks to certain members giving them war zone abilities such as calling in reinforcements, setting objectives, guiding other players, diverting power to under attack controlled bases and sending engineer droids to captured outposts to reinforce them. That sort of thing. I want to see war everywhere in the game. I want factions having controlled areas that are specific to them. If you are a member of the opposing faction, you can enter the zone but cannot attack people without them attacking you first (for instance a sith in republic territory) and you wont survive long. Additionally i want to see neutral zones where players are forced to hide their factional banners so can walk side by side without fighting breaking loose. War Zones should force you to show your banner and battle it out. So all in all i want safe zones, neutral zones, war zones. But one of the biggest things i was to see with factions is the ability to player the Battlefield Commander type game as well.
End Game:
Raids? PvP metagame? Player created content? Perhaps even alternative systems such as exploration and factional end game content?
End game content has been stuck in the dark ages and no game has got it right so far. Ill let you know right now, i hate raiding with a passion so its safe to say i don’t want to see raiding in BioWare’s mmo in WoW’s format. As i mentioned in the quest section, i really love Public Quests. They are raids but without the archaic mechanics and life tapping demands. For that reason, i would make sure that lots of Public Quests are added to the game to replace traditional WoW and EQ style raids. On top of that i would like to see the RvR/PvP and Factional elements really take off at end game. I would like to see battles triggered to take over large cities, launch attacks on ships and weapons yards etc all revolving around the PvP quest system i talked about. A lot of developers, BioWare included, don’t like the idea of player created content but personally i don’t think it should be brushed off so easily. As a developer you have thousands of players willing to devote hundreds of hours of their free time to create content that they want to play. This really should be harnessed in a time when content development costs so much. Now with player created content I’m talking about the whole lot here. I want to see player create backstory, player generated zones, stories, info bites, house designs, creatures, npcs everything. All submitted to a content approval team and designed using a user friendly and deep player content tool. Infact, the looks of things, this is what Cryptic is doing with STO so i cant wait to see that.
I know i could go on forever into different areas and go deeper into the ones i listed but i just wanted to give a top level overview of what i want to see and ask you want you want to see innovation wise and system. Post a quick comment if you want to share your thoughts.
Over the next week ill be covering off in more detail most of these areas discussing certain things I’d like to see etc. Keep checking back.
I think that MMOs have a great potential to revolutionize faction systems. Reading what you have down lead me to come up with an idea that I believe would work well with a Faction vs. Faction PvP system that happens on all planets.
My idea is that the game should ship would pre-existing factions and alignments for those factions. For example let’s say the four factions on release are the Jedi Order, the Republic, the Mandalorians, and the Sith. The Jedi would be allied with the republic, neutral with the mandalorians(thinking that there was a greater threat), and at war with the Sith. The Republic would be at war with the mandalorians and the sith and the mandalorians would be neutral with the sith (as it was the sith that pushed the mandalorians to start a war with the republic).
Now where it can be revolutionized is by allowing players to break off from an existing faction and create their own. To prevent having a bunch of small factions there could be a rule saying that you have to have at least 250 people in the faction within a week or the seperation would be quelled and they would all be forced back into the original faction. Once the faction is established, there could be elections for leaders/senate and they can set their alignment against the other factions.
This would allow great player freedom, say a group of Jedi believe that the Mandalorians are the threat and they break off from the Jedi Order and form the Order of the Yada Yada. They get the prerequisite number of people to break off and then hold elections and set their relations as War (Mandalorians, Sith) Allies (Republic) Neutral (Jedi Order). If the number required is high enough, then you can’t have every single large guild making their own factions, it would require aliances with other guilds to make happen, promoting politics and guild interaction.
I think this would allow a multitude of player possibilities, such as Republic Soldiers going rogue and killing everyone, Mandalorians allying with the Sith to wipe out the universe, Jedi allying with the Mandalorians against the Republic and so on. It brings a whole nother level of RPing to the game.
As far as progression systems, I would love a skill based system, something like what was in UO, where you could pick what skills you wanted to fit the character you wanted to make.
Morganic said this on July 31, 2008 at 7:38 am
I want some innovations in the way players can interact with the game universe and make it change. SWG add some great features about this : player cities and the ability for players to build structures (military bases, extractors, power generators…). Of course there was some problems because of this, but the base idea was great.
I hope they will find new and improved ways for us to change the game world by our individual and collective actions.
I’m not interested in static worlds MMO.
Stefan said this on July 31, 2008 at 10:41 am
Reply to: Morganic said this on July 31, 2008 at 7:38 am
That’s a really interesting idea. How about instead of creating the faction you tie this into the guild system instead and use that as your faction base?
When you create your guild, you set who you are aligned to, who you want to support, who your enemy is and who you are neutral to (say for instance you NEED to have atleast one enemy, one neutral, one ally etc). As time goes on you would be able to change your alignment when you want but you’d need to work up a progress line. For example; if you were at war with jedi, you could decide to go neutral then eventually ally if you wanted (at the cost of another alignment faction. To do this you would start to do loyalty quests gaining favour with that faction you wish to change etc.
The other route of course is to set up factions outside of guilds and use an alliance system to let people join or invite guilds as you want. I think it would be really interesting to see a faction spring up supported by tonnes of guilds that changes the way the game plays.
The problem however is that if you have total freedom to choose your alignment, you limit the options you have for factional warfare content put into the game. If you start off the game with a clear push for two sides then once you start setting your own alignments things might get tricky. Say you have a sith base training mando elite soldiers to fight the republic and jedi. If you had favourable alignment to jedi and mando then your not going to be able to take part in this mission. Im sure there are ways around it.
I really think that a guild system could work well where the guild itself becomes the faction. It would need a highly impressive and innovative guild and alliance system to support it but i would love to see it.
owenlars said this on July 31, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Reply To: Stefan said this on July 31, 2008 at 10:41 am
I would also love a virtual world mmo as opposed to a linear one but i think BioWare have made up their mind and are running with it which is a shame.
There are ways however that we could add in elements that allow players to take the world into their own hands and depending on their actions, change how the world is. The base idea was great in SWG and infact check back later today because im putting up an article i’ve been working on just about factional RvR. It involves bases, outposts, battlefields, commanders and a new RvR quest system. Most of all though it talks about how players can change the way the gameworld is structured by fighting and winning for their side.
owenlars said this on July 31, 2008 at 1:14 pm
I have been thinking about progression through skill for quite some time. I agree that SWG’s skill system had its flaws, and I also dislike the class/level system you see in nearly every other MMO.
One thing that I thought was the biggest mistake with SWG’s system was that the skills were tied into the professions. Lets say you wanted one of the Bounty Hunter skills but you didn’t actually want to, you know, hunt bounties?
What I think is needed is a system where you can pick which skills you want to learn. In order to learn skills you will need to meet the requirements. For example, if you want to pick up the Surgery skill, you need to know the Anatomy skill and have a certain level of dexterity (I sure as heck don’t want a surgeon to operate on me if he has problems holding a pen).
The real issue is how do you learn the skills? I do not like the EVE system of using strictly timesinks to get skills. I think instead having a system that employs both timesinks and learning while using is a good idea. Having the ability to pick a specific skill to learn when you go offline; then having that skill receive experience points at a set rate. When you log back on you can then proceed to earn the xp by practicing with the skills that were a requirement. The offline study will gain you xp, but at a lower rate than what you can earn online.
This, of course, would mean needing to employ several different types of experience points. From healing xp to ranged weapon xp. I am also not certain how this would apply to crafting skills. I particularly hated wasting resources in SWG just to level up a crafting profession. I’ll need to think on that some more.
Finally, I’ve been wavering back and forth between having a cap on the number of skills you can learn and being able to learn all of them. Most of the time I think having a cap is the best way to go. If you want to learn a new skill you have to sacrifice one you already learned. Being able to constantly change my character was what I really loved about SWG. I didn’t participate in the profession grind for the jedi (during the entire Pre-CU I was a Master Ranger, my weapon choices did change though).
Probably the biggest reason why I would like to see a skill system is because of the fluctuating nature of MMO games. As new content is added, old skills might become better or worse. In a class/level system that essentially means making classes better or worse. Good for the people that have classes that become better, but bad for those that are “nerfed.”
In a skill system, particularly one that isn’t tied into professions, this means that everyone is potentially affected. They can either learn a skill that might have been made more useful by a new quest; or they can drop a skill that might have been reduced because of a new item introduced. More importantly, new skills themselves can be easily added and becomes new content itself.
Just something I’ve been mulling over in my spare time.
Kenshu
Kenshu said this on August 13, 2008 at 6:04 pm
I liked the player made city idea in SWG, but I hated the way it was implemented. It would have been nice if they would have had streets or something appear between placed buildings instead of nothing but the ground. It felt tacky and took away from the immersion of being a part of the city.
The Jedi system, before they made it a choosable class, was set up pretty well. It would be nice though if they would come up with a “Jedi Engine” that has a huge list of things to choose from so it can be easily random per player while still making it a challange. There would obviously have to be things that aren’t random as well. As far as Jedi are concerned, I would also like to see them implement the Jedi Trials. It would be good to have a hierarchy within the class so there was still room for growth.
As others have also said, I would also love to see a more dynamic world. Whenever I get on the boat in WoW, I always wish there could be a random storm that could shipwreck you. Then you would have to go through a nice little 1 man instance to find a way to get help… /shrug… something… anything. I was beta testing a MMORPG once.. I don’t remember which and to be honest it could have been SWG, but there was mention of players being able to name places noone has ever been before. I never saw it happen, but it would be a cool way to leave your mark on your world.
Things that interest me most in a MMORPG…
1) Player Housing that is severely customizable.
Quests to assassinate other players(A++++ SWG)
2) Dynamic environments
3) Randomly generated instances
4) Mounts/Vehicles that can also be customized
4) Some kind of stock market system to move the economy this way or that
5) The feeling that your toons are important to the world
6) A deep buteasy to follow skill system
7) The ability to dye your armor (this is for you blizzard)
9) …?
Drop me some mail if you are interested in kicking this around back and forth.. likes me a good Star Wars MMORPG discussion
Slayde31@gmail.com
Slayde said this on August 15, 2008 at 11:35 pm