Part one in a three part series of articles depicting a different approach to MMORPG design capable of defeating the stagnation plaguing the genre.
I’d like to take a moment (and by “moment” I mean a three part series of articles) to address what I see as the largest flaw present in modern day MMORPGs as we know them: the lack of self-perpetuating content.
To start off I figured I’d take up the simpler of the three aspects that make up this complex topic: items. Though first a short prelude.
Let’s consider the initial premise of MMORPGs and what they promise players. When entering a vast, creative fantasy world, players seek a variety of exhilarating experiences such as exploration, challenge and the unexpected. They fantasize about all the wonder and surprises that await them during their adventures across wide open plains, dark forests and deep dungeons. That’s what players anticipated back in the day when installing their copy of vanilla World of Warcraft or delving into an Ultima Online shard for the first time, and that’s what they dream of to this day.
Yet what happens when any given player ends up discovering the entire, inherently finite world created by the game’s developers? That feeling of magic fades, as the player essentially knows everything there is to know about the game world, having discovered all the locations, interacted with all the NPCs and found or seen all the items.
At that point the game is over, despite all attempts from developers to make players think otherwise with a variety of repetitive content both in the PvE and PvP spectrums of the game (the so-called “endgame”). The surprise is no longer there, the thrill is gone, and the excitement of discovery is lost. But does it really have to be this way?
Not at all. The unfortunate truth of the matter is that developers have become far too obsessed with concepts such as “balance” and “equality” to do anything about such dead ends in their products.
For this article, let’s delve into one effective solution to the Curse of Stagnation: randomized item drops and stats. As it stands, MMORPG developers in this day and age wish to keep everything under control. Players are forbidden from ever overpowering other players in any meaningful ways, restricted from ever reaching any pinnacles of power and are generally herded like cattle by the shepherds responsible for the game’s survival.
The depressing result of this train of thought is that the item system must be maintained within strict boundaries. Some items may have randomized stat budgets, yet at the end of the day, even those budgets are regulated in ways that prevent such randomly generated items from ever being particularly useful or exciting. Furthermore, all the most powerful items, especially at endgame, generally tend to be unique and possess static stat budgets.
My question is simple: why not have truly randomly generated items or at least randomized stat budgets that have the potential to generate truly mouthwatering, awe-inspiring items? Why not give players an endless experience of the unexpected all throughout the leveling process and at endgame too?
I’m sure that this very idea would inspire absolute terror and indignation in countless people both on the player and developer sides of the modern day MMORPG equation, but that very reaction brings up a very important question: why? Why do some players and many developers alike feel that the item system must be controlled in a manner so strict that it drains the very life out of discovering new items in the game world? Why must items with randomized stat budgets be relegated to low levels and placed in the lowest quality categories, while predefined items dominate them in every way and at every level of play?
The developers’ reasoning is pretty obvious. They think that players want total equality and are angered when other players overbear and overpower them or NPCs they find challenging, thus directly or indirectly making them feel small and powerless. The developers then proceed to make everything as balanced and equally accessible (read: flat and monotonous) as can be to avoid that.
Sure, on paper that sort of mentality makes sense, and many players support it, but at what cost?
Think for a moment of how much is lost to such draconian practices. Is such forced equality truly worth the loss of the magic that the fantasy world of an MMORPG can bring if it were just allowed to do so?
Picture this scenario: you are playing your character and kill a certain NPC, either for a quest, while scavenging for crafting materials, or just while randomly strolling past the poor creature’s habitation. Kneeling over the defeated enemy’s remains, you forage for items, and but a second later you are dumbfounded by what you see in the resulting loot window. An item of such rarity and such incredible stats that you struggle to find words to express just how lucky you are to have found it, having beaten the odds that number in the millions. You didn’t have to join a raid, you didn’t have to farm a dungeon boss for weeks, you didn’t even have to camp a rare NPC’s spawn point for days. The NPC was average, the area you found it was average, and no quest prepared you for what you would find. You swiftly loot the item and then marvel at it in your bag for several moments before either equipping it, if it fits your character, or taking the fastest form of transportation to the nearest auction house to sell your newly found treasure for a fortune that will last you for months to come. Or perhaps you’ll give it to a friend as an amazing gift? The possibilities are quite numerous.
However, as is quite obvious, simply handing out such items all the time is not particularly “magical” at all. This is why the focus of this approach lies not in the items themselves but in the enchanting potential of finding items like that despite incredibly low drop chances, dynamic drop locations and randomized item stat budgets. That scintillating potential is the factor that truly inspires players, and yet it is something that remains vastly ignored, especially in terms of endgame content.
But therein lies the magic that could be if developers were to give up on their obsession with balance and allow the item system some freedom. Needless to say, some restrictions would always need to be present to ensure the item system remains an actual system rather than turn to chaos, but at the end of the day, randomization is exactly the solution that can save the stagnant item hunting model currently implemented in all the largest MMORPG titles.
When players know that the game world at large is littered with the magical, seductive potential of items so rare and powerful that but one in ten thousand players will ever acquire them (but every player has the chance to be that one), then the static nature of the game world’s terrain, quests, NPCs and storylines all lose their dampening qualities. Furthermore, the players must be allowed to use these items against other players, lest they lose their inspiring qualities and become yet another trinket in their inventory, while all PvP is done exclusively in “equal” gear that everyone has access to. After all, a very large part of the excitement professed by MMORPGs lies in the interaction with other players, yet as long as that interaction falls prey to rules and regulations that make everyone absolutely equal, all magic is simply sucked out of the whole ordeal.
When all is said and done, no developer can provide enough static terrain, quests and NPCs to fully sate the endless appetite of millions of players consuming their carefully crafted fantasy world on a daily basis. The folly of such attempts is visible even in the largest titles on the MMORPG market today. Most fail due to lack of resources and time as they chase the creation of new expansions and content patches, while some of the top players succeed, yet even then merely stave off the inevitable Curse of Stagnation that leads to players being bored not of their activities in the game but of the lack of anything truly unexpected.
As the single constant of MMORPG nature I always reiterate goes: only player generated content can be truly diverse and unpredictable. Perhaps not worded quite as clearly as necessary for this topic, this concept nonetheless includes incredibly rare and randomized items playing a major role in an MMORPG. Why? Because players are the ones who cause the randomization to occur, be it through killing monsters, crafting or any other means of acquiring items in the game world.
It is from those very actions that stems the title of this series of articles and the general idea I’m trying to relay with it. In order for an MMORPG to be truly exciting and entertaining to play, rather than consume, it must provide a self-perpetuating game experience.
What does that mean? Exactly what it sounds like. The product in question must not be an interactive movie or graphic novel that provides players with content to consume in finite amounts. It must be an actual game, implementing various systems that create a self-perpetuating cycle, which allows the players themselves to create content without the developer constantly shoveling out new content patches and expansions in an attempt to keep players from leaving.
Now this does not in any way imply an absence of content patches or expansions, for they bring new static content that is very much enjoyable indeed, especially in terms of progressing the game’s story, which is an aspect of game development that has always held immense prominence since the dawn of the RPG genre, but static content must never come before dynamic, self-perpetuating gameplay.
What the idea of self-perpetuating gameplay does entail is focusing on the roots of MMORPGs and video games as a whole: game mechanics. It means providing players with a means of bringing their beloved game world to life in their own minds due to the inherent, elusive potential it holds in the form of vast numbers of incredibly low chance item drops and randomized item stats. In other words, some item drop chances must be so low, the locations of items must be so unpredictable, and the item stat budgets of most (if not all) items must be so varied, that the game retains mysteries from even its most dedicated players for years upon years after release.
More experienced MMORPG players would note at this point that such a feature inherently furthers hunting for items in repetitive cycles also known as “farming.”
However, to that I must ask: what’s wrong with farming? And who’s forcing you to do it? Whether you do it alone or in a group, and whether you do it by fighting NPCs or crafting items, you are participating in an activity within the fantasy game world you adore, creating both potential world PvP content with your actions and entertaining yourself with an activity that holds amazing potential for finding something truly unexpected. You are part of a living, breathing game world where unexpected things can happen. Is that not more exciting than knowing everything and always being in total control as you farm the same endgame dungeon or raid for the 50th time?
Furthermore, are endgame dungeons and raids not farming in and of themselves? Do they not provide players with a repetitive experience as they strive to beat out the various static items designated to various bosses?
At the end of the day, the magical potential of randomized item stats, unpredictable drop conditions, and low drop chances can be applied to all parts of the game world in an MMORPG, from NPCs in various free roaming game world areas that can be hunted alone, to world bosses, dungeon mobs, raid bosses and even crafting or PvP.
Sure, the end result is that some players, at certain points in time, end up possessing items that place them ahead of the competition, but what’s so terrible about that? Everyone is equal before the winds of chance and have the same opportunity of finding incredibly rare and amazing items in the game world as anyone else, whether they wish to play alone, with a few friends, or in an enormous raid that throws their frame rate out the window.
Why then withhold such an amazing feature from the players? To appease a vocal minority who grow upset and throw tantrums over “inequality” and other such sentiments? Or to conform to modern MMORPG design standards? No one ever got anywhere by blending in with the crowd.
It can certainly be tough to convince publishers of taking risks, but the gaming industry is not one of cinematography or book publishing. Games ride on game mechanics first and foremost as their distinguishing feature.
I postulate that MMORPGs are in no way meant to be e-sports, nor anything requiring extreme balancing and strict barriers. The inspiring fantasy worlds created for MMORPGs are meant for something much, much more than that, the very things players dream of with every new MMORPG announced on the market: a mysterious, challenging, unpredictable fantasy realm filled to the brim with new things to discover and unexpected encounters to participate in, whether they’ve been playing the game for a week or five years.
The means of achieving such a virtual fantasy world start with items, a core concept of the genre, and the game mechanics responsible for making them truly fun. And why stop at that? Implement randomized NPCs as well. Truly bring the game world to life, and don’t crumble to the cries of players who have simply been frowned upon by fate, because the chance that the tides of destiny will suddenly turn is always there, and it’ll keep them playing until they too find an amazing, dynamic experience that they will remember for a long time to come.
Where to go from there I’ll elaborate on in Part 2 of the Perpetual Motion Series that will revolve around the topic of player interaction.
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