For rather a long period of time, I've played MMORPGs. Every single one, however, seems to fail at the same point - they reward the hardcore gamer, thus encouraging addiction. This may be a good business ethic, but is it an ethical one? I don't think so. As well as this, a very lowly-skilled player, spending enough time, can easily gain enough experience (in game terms) to get to a far higher level than another player, less hardcore, who has far more skill. There are multiple ways of dealing with this, as far as I can see. One of these is to thoroughly rid the hypothetical MMO of levels. However, this would almost certainly drive away many of the target audience, as much of the appeal of an MMO is the ability to gain instant fame simply by that number beside your character's name. Instead I believe that the player's skill should be measured by level, with levels in the traditional sense playing either no part, or being very easy to raise, and having a low skill cap. This should apply to equipment also. For example, if a player is relatively skilled at the game, then they will earn experience quickly, due to being able to kill creatures easily. This experience will not contribute to the player becoming stronger, but will rather contribute to the player's "rank". The player, due to weapons having little effect on overall strength, will easily be able to experiment with different professions, decided by the weapons wielded and the skills equipped. Likewise, the player's skills will not increase by a very significant amount, but will nonetheless be easy to make stronger, through the player learning how best to use those skills. To conclude, I believe that players should be able to easily become of equal strength to the strongest players, yet should not be disadvantaged because of this, and that a new player with skill should be able to be more well-known, and of higher rank, than a hardcore gamer with very little skill. -Delphinus

If you want to see an MMO that doesn't have levels and does depend on skill, check out Puzzle Pirates. The only determinant of your effectiveness in whatever you're trying to do is how good you are at the puzzle. And while your skill with each puzzle is reported (ranging from Novice to Ultimate), that's just a measure of how good you are, and it does not increase monotonically.

Quote:Original post by Kest
Has it ever occured to anyone here that you don't need to make an MMORPG? It is actually possible to build an MMO that isn't an RPG.

I'm all for driving a wedge between those two acronyms. Worst genre, ever.

While I feel the genre is poorly designed as opposed to being fundamentally flawed, I do agree that there should be other MMOs that do not need to be RPG or at the least pure RPG.

I would like to see something that is somewhat a mix of MMOFPS/RTS where you take the basic quake style game, put it in a large MMO setting. Have two or more factions with NPCs in ultimate command to keep balance. Put captureable(SP?) forward bases and a good way of commanding multiple PCs and NPCs and you have something I would play. (Think MMO Battlefront II with better command structure and larger maps...)

Quote:Original post by Xeile

Quote:Original post by Delphinus
For rather a long period of time, I've played MMORPGs. Every single one, however, seems to fail at the same point - they reward the hardcore gamer, thus encouraging addiction. This may be a good business ethic, but is it an ethical one? I don't think so. As well as this, a very lowly-skilled player, spending enough time, can easily gain enough experience (in game terms) to get to a far higher level than another player, less hardcore, who has far more skill.

There are multiple ways of dealing with this, as far as I can see. One of these is to thoroughly rid the hypothetical MMO of levels. However, this would almost certainly drive away many of the target audience, as much of the appeal of an MMO is the ability to gain instant fame simply by that number beside your character's name. Instead I believe that the player's skill should be measured by level, with levels in the traditional sense playing either no part, or being very easy to raise, and having a low skill cap. This should apply to equipment also.

For example, if a player is relatively skilled at the game, then they will earn experience quickly, due to being able to kill creatures easily. This experience will not contribute to the player becoming stronger, but will rather contribute to the player's "rank". The player, due to weapons having little effect on overall strength, will easily be able to experiment with different professions, decided by the weapons wielded and the skills equipped. Likewise, the player's skills will not increase by a very significant amount, but will nonetheless be easy to make stronger, through the player learning how best to use those skills.

To conclude, I believe that players should be able to easily become of equal strength to the strongest players, yet should not be disadvantaged because of this, and that a new player with skill should be able to be more well-known, and of higher rank, than a hardcore gamer with very little skill.

-Delphinus

You talk about skill throughout the entire post and I get the expression that you think MMORPG's are all about (showing) skill.
First of all, most commercial MMORPG's are entertainment games and are designed to entertain its playerbase. These MMORPG's are just like other games, with the addition of a highly praised social factor (and here is the part were gaining fame becomes interesting).

You talk about all MMORPG's failing at the same point, but what really does failing mean exactly? In my terms it would mean the entire playerbase stops playing the game. Well if take a look at a very popular MMORPG named World of Warcraft, you see this one is doing everything but failing.

What I do agree upon is that WoW tend to reward hardcore players over the casuals, but this is still not really defined as problem frankly, in fact, this is an accepted game design (albeit not by everyone), due the lack of a better game design.

As for the WoW example applied on your conclusion, the creators (Blizzard Entertainment) somehow did accomplished this. The Arena system lets casual players with 'great skill' compete against 'skill-less' hardcore players and be victorious. Yet this arena feature doesn't seem to be key element of making WoW so succesful though, that is far more complex story...

Regards,
Xeile

For a MMORPG that allows low SP players to combat high SP players with high levels of success if the low SP player has a better understanding of the game than the high SP player, see Eve Online, my current addiction. Reactions are somewhat important but a good understanding of how to run combat in the game is in many cases more important than SP (unless you run into a ganksquad :p)

I think that skills should be used primarily to allow for the use of better weapons (but not weapons so much better that they are "leet") and expanded strategies. With this approach a player with a smaller group of strategies can defeat a player with a larger group of strategies if they employ it better