Combat is at the core of every MMO I can think of that has released in the past six years. What do I mean by at the core? Fighting or participating in some form of combat is what you ‘do’ and how you ‘do’ it is just a matter of how differently you fight something. I don’t really need to analyze any examples, but to ensure that I get my point across I want to look at some big ones.
In World of Warcraft the entire game is about combat because you’re either PvPing or you’re PvEing. Aside from doing one of those two things, what else is there to do? Warhammer Online is the exact same way in that every effort put into that game has been towards creating game mechanics that get you to fight something. Age of Conan, Star Trek Online, LotRO, you name it and everything revolves around fighting. An argument could be made that the developers have attempted to add little things here and there that aren’t about fighting — such as LotRO’s music system — but that’s not sufficient enough to alter how the average player can play the game as intended by the game’s natural design.
I think back to earlier MMO’s and I see quite a different scene. In The Realm I spent 80% of my time socializing in a town or on a screen (the game was set up such that you walked onto screens and went up down left or right to a new screen) with other people. We would roleplay, talk about life, talk about the game, and essentially be our character. In Star Wars Galaxies, 90% of my time was spent outside of combat. Decorating my house, crafting, socializing in town, and doing the plethora of other activities (like taming creatures to sell, being a Doctor and staying in Hospitals to earn tips healing people) that were designed to have equal impact on the player as combat did were rewarding. Combat in SWG was the rare thing to do — it would be like playing music in LotRO rather than the other way around. This wasn’t the case for everyone, or even all the time for me, because as I said it was of equal impact and fighting could be rewarding too… I just had options.  Even in EverQuest, which is very much about fighting, there was a lot of downtime where groups of people, even when in the act of grouping to fight, simply talked.
Kill this, fight that, go engage in combat with something here or there… it’s all about fighting something these days. If you’re not fighting then you’re waiting to fight or your preparing for a time when you will. People associate the lack of things to do combat with in a game as a reason for quitting; I have even used it as a reason for quitting when I played LotRO and beat all the bosses in the game a weeks after they came out.
I think about what I would want to do if I were actually my character in-game. I would want downtime. There are times when I like just talking to other people or doing other things. There should be other options in the new and upcoming games so that we’re not always stuck with just this over-emphasized idea that if we’re not bashing something on the head then we’re wasting time.
Less emphasis on combat definitely creates more of a virtual world feel. It also makes for a more social game which is the seed needed to grow a community. There’s also the sandbox side of a game that offers options; some people even think of EverQuest as a sandbox game when in reality it wasn’t — there was just a ton to do in that game.
I’ve written about how I would create a lot of social mechanics in a MMO if I were to develop one. You may recall my example of a player-run tavern with real players providing the entertainment, food, and services. The key to this working is for combat to not be the core of the game. The guy serving drinks needs to think that the game revolves around him just as much as the guy going out to slay dragons.
Should all MMO’s do this? No. I think combat focused games are great because some people truly want nothing but combat. Do I think that MMO’s without any form of combat at all should exist? Absolutely. I think there’s a real lack of MMO’s where players develop their characters and play a different role other than the hero. Ideally though, a MMO which embodies both aspects equally is going to grab the largest market.  It can be done because it’s been done before.
Do I want a Virtual Chatroom? No, but I think a lot of what brought substance — the meat and potatoes — to MMORPGs when they first came about was the fact that it wasn’t all about combat.  We need a little more Raph Koster in games these days.
I believe and “Amen” is in order – can we please for the love of all that is holy stop making games that revolve around go here kill this, rinse, repeat, and by the way make sure to kill those to get that epic mount, to make going there to kill those faster….
Please…
I say they make a Harvest Moon MMORPG so that everyone gets to do tedious farm work for the low-low price of $14.99 a month!
I’ll keep my Combat-oriented MMO’s actually, seeing as I like to get my blood pumping.
Not sure LOTRO in US has any, but in Europe we have one RP server (Laurelin), and I can say that RP has is a good part of the game.
You can walk in the Pranching Pony and there will always be some RP going on, there are regular weekly events. And this is just for pubblic side of RP.
There are also many heavy-RP guilds that organize events (some are even open to other players).
Lotro is probably the only one that has such a background (maybe AoC could be compared to it) and this is probably the main reason RP is working so well in it, at least in Europe!
Amen from me too. Another side-effect of single-focus games (ie. combat) is that the min-maxing becomes incredibly single focus too. If one talent or skill or ability provides so much as 0.01% advantage over another, then _that_ is the only good choice to make, _that_ is the talent that is enshrined in the FOTM cookie spec.
I want an MMO where you start off, like most MMOs, as an individual hero … but grow into a game where you are a lord or a baron or even a king of many many NPCs. Entire villages of vassals. Being good at first-person combat will only get you so far, and the taunt “you and whose army?” could find you roundly defeated by another player who has far less personal combat capability.
So .. a mix of first-person MMOs and Dwarf Fortress. I could either let my town guards take care of intruding bandits, or I could take up the sword myself.
This is also a great way to fill up vast expanses of wilderness, so another excuse for big-world games, which not-coincidentally makes it possible to build _exploration_ back into the game.
I have to agree, the FIRST mmo I was ever introduced to was Runescape classic back in 2002 or 2003.
Basically it had a ton of skills that produced or used raw materials to create whatever products you desired. Most end products were designed to be used in combat.
For example 2 mithril ore and 10 coal made a mithril bar, 5 mithril bars could be made into a 2h sword that was popular with pvpers.
Combat was the driving force behind the crafting and merchanting that went on BUT it didnn’t have to be the primary thing you did or somthing you did at all for that matter.
You could make thousands of gold just by figuring out what items were in demand finding a way to aquire them cheaply and then selling them.
Although EQ was largely combat-focused, there was so much downtime in the game that it kind of accidentally forced socializing in the game – which was one of the things i loved about it. One of my favorite things to do (pre-bazaar) was to hang out in East Commons for a few hours peddling my wares and looking for good deals.
These days the masses don’t want downtime. They want the action to be non-stop for the most part, death to be rare with no consequences, and the rewards to flow freely and often, automated vendors, automated travel etc.
They got what they wanted, much to the detriment of the style of gaming i enjoy unfortunately.
While I agree with you mostly, there is one caveat that a designer has to look out for. Bordem. There is a fine line between down time, with nothing to do, and down time with many mechanics at your disposal. For instance EQ2 is great in that regard as you can play their Legends CCG in the client. Vanguard is a great example of this with thier diplomocy and crafting lines. There needs to be more things to do during down time.
The reason many designers focus on combat is because its the easiest thing to get right and the majority of people do not complain as long as their is combat. Good points listed here Keen, but requires alot of finesse to get right.
I guess you never tried Vanguard. There are 3 “spheres” in Vanguard : adventuring (everything involving combat), crafting and diplomacy. You level independantly in these 3 “spheres”.
Contrary to all other MMO i’ve played, crafting is a real game in Vanguard, and you can also build boats and houses, not only armors and weapons.
Diplomacy is also a complete game, unique to Vanguard, some kind of card game you play against NPCs. For both crafting and diplomacy, you have skills, equipement and quests, like you have for combat in other MMOs.
And YES, it is great to have something else than combat driven gameplay. You should try it !
I still love the combat design and mechanics of my WE from WAR and ‘Sin from Aion … and absolutely loved the design of my PoM from AoC … yet I no longer play any of those games.
Conclusion; I agree.
In EQ2 I estimate I spend less than a third of my time in combat. Over the
last month Mrs Bhagpuss has been playing obsessively and I doubt she’s been in combat even for 10% of the time.
All SoE MMOs have a lot of non-combat options but EQ2 just teems with them. Housing itself is a full-time occupation for some and part-time for many more. There’s the obvious crafting, then there’s collecting, which is an everlasting scavenger hunt with prizes, there are constant seasonal events, even ones tied to the phase of the moon. The there are the quests
themselves , many of which involve little or
no combat.
Good though EQ2 is on this front, I agree that future games could offer much more. Not seeing too much sign of it yet, sadly.
While I do agree with you, the answer to why most of our seemingly sensible demands do not get met is “casual gamer”; that is where the money is and selling a game to the masses focused on either decorating your house or melting faces, well we can guess where the bulk of development money is going to be channeled…
I believe that social mechanisms are the future of the genre and that it is one way to advance MMORPGs to the next level. Everyone wants to live in a virtual world and be somehow important…few people actually are.
You can do so many different things with social mechanisms that there is something for everyone. Have elected leadership for your “country” “district” ” or town.” With multiple levels. Political activism. A judicial system. Trade guilds with guild masters and apprentices. Traders that control the economy. Every aspect of the game could be player driven. Religious leadership. You can built a bureaucracy and give regular players small pieces of power over something. The possibilities are endless and the interaction between players would be meaningful and important.
On the highest level – you can then make crucial decisions about gameplay – like setting the death penalty in your region. Players can run on certain platforms to make promises to make the land more carebear or hardcore. Then – there can be war against other factions to force your rules onto them. People dont like to fight for random towers and castles…people are insanely passionate about game play issues…make them fight about game play issues..!
Re: the Vanguard mention with crafting and diplomacy- great ideas (especially diplomacy, crafting wasn’t really innovative) but they are still things people do on their own and they don’t really foster socializing that much (crafting does a little).
I really like the ideas of having things to do with other people other than combat. I like the idea of giving players things to do in a pub or something where people will gather, but i don’t think being a “server” or something as mentioned in this blog is the answer. In pubs, give people the ability to get together and play card or dice games or something. That will draw people to the taverns. Anyway, stuff like this is needed where it’s a form of entertainment different from combat but can be done with other players to bring the social/community aspects back in MMORPGs. Give guilds the ability to host skill tournements with bow/arrow events, fencing/jousting etc where other guilds or solo people can participate. Ability for bards to have concerts where anyone can come and enjoy the music etc.
i know…i’m dreaming.
It’s easy to take a look at WoW (and its myriad clones) and forget that people out there are, in fact, doing things differently.
Plenty of non-combat games exist, right now. A Tale in the Desert comes to mind as the epitome of this genre, although it’s purely non-combat and you do mention wanting to retain combat on some level. EVE is a sort of hybrid, which gives you essentially optional and consensual combat. Even Second Life comes to mind, although its anarchic, user driven content doesn’t give you the sort of cohesive world that I expect you want.
If you notice a common thread here, it’s that these are *niche* games. Most people do want WoW style combat, as evidenced by WoW’s success; if you want something different, it’s already out there, you just have to look for it.
I’m going to echo those “Amens” up there. I loved being a Diplomat in Vanguard, each of my roommates tried crafting and fighting and both of them ended up watching my computer screen more than playing their characters. There are probably other reasons for that, like the glitchy combat, but all in all, I was having a lot more fun.
As to the poster early on who said something about a Harvest Moon MMO… I’d probably play that. I’d love to kick back with a dog in a virtual wilderness while chatting with people as I log and fish for a living. Meanwhile, my real life girlfriend would probably play with me, and since she likes cooking, she’d cook up all the fish I bring home while working on her baking profession. I could have a feast with friends at my place! Wow, now I -really- want that game to happen, haha.
We all ready have a SIMS 🙂 But seriously, I don’t mind hav ing these ideas but they need to be secondary. Combat PvP PvE and RvR should always be first. The SIMS is where you want to go if you want building a home and socializing to be the main thing you want to do.
I think DAoC did the best job for housing. You could build cool homes and decorate with items and even trophies from kills.
I too wish there was less combat and more varied action, endless killing does kill the immersion in a game (especially mass AoE killing which gets plain silly at times).
Its been like an arms race the past few years with the speed of killing going up and up. Instead to model a real RPG killing would be a very small part of the game.
Its tough though making a game where this is true, although they could make a start by having us knockout people, have mobs run away etc. Solving puzzles in an adventure would also vary up some of the action, small steps but at least then going in the right direction.
I agree with a lot of this, but for me personally I would love more reasons to randomly explore. Whether it be random treasure chests ala Dark Fall, or Random crazy arse tough bosses that roam the land. Then when someone spots them use the social networks to create a brute squad.
Every time I go out leveling my herbalism in WoW it amazes me how much of their amazing world is never seen/used. They really need a way to get folks outside and out of town.
Actually I strayed off topic, sorry bout that!
I kinda disagree with the post, I think the one thing people actually enjoy in MMOs they have a fair chunk of time invested in, is combat – learning the ins and outs of your class, gaining new skills, and learning to sue them correctly is one of the biggest carrots in the game.
The problem is the way the worlds work in MMOs, is what makes the combat-based chores boring. ITs always the same kind of quest, with the same generic story that sums up to kill or gather quests. Sometimes you kill AND gather! Whee.
GW2 is going in the right direction with their dynamic chain event questing system – if the world you explore is dynamic, and at any given time different interesting engaging shit can happen, woudlnt that world be much more fun to explore than running into the field you know mosnter X roams in, and killing it for 3 hours to grind xp?
Combat is fine, vamp up the worlds we fight in instead, plz.
I remember when PotBS was talking about putting in an ability for players to govern the cities in the game.
Right now EvE does the “sandbox that allows non-combat characters” best among the current offerings out there. You can play your entire EvE career as an industrialist or researcher or miner or trader or some combo, etc.
It’s no secret that skill-based/non-level based sandbox is the best way to get this kind of game. All the best implementations of this type of game have been as such. Gotta take the game off the rails to make it work.
Great topic and I really agree on most points. As mentioned I think this is why Vanguard sucked me in so well because I did all 3 spheres and so I had A LOT of downtime from combat.
Another thing VG had that was social that you’d never expect is gathering. I’m really surprised other games haven’t stolen this but you could team up with friends on nodes for more resources and was well worth it if the node had uncommon and rare resources on it.
I do love combat though and is still the #1 make or break for me when it comes to MMO’s. It’s the reason I’ve stuck with AoC for so long, but I’d sure love more options in that game.
You can do so many different things with social mechanisms that there is something for everyone. Have elected leadership for your “country†“district††or town.†With multiple levels. Political activism. A judicial system. Trade guilds with guild masters and apprentices. Traders that control the economy. Every aspect of the game could be player driven. Religious leadership. You can built a bureaucracy and give regular players small pieces of power over something. The possibilities are endless and the interaction between players would be meaningful and important.
On the highest level – you can then make crucial decisions about gameplay – like setting the death penalty in your region. Players can run on certain platforms to make promises to make the land more carebear or hardcore. Then – there can be war against other factions to force your rules onto them. People dont like to fight for random towers and castles…people are insanely passionate about game play issues…make them fight about game play issues..!
I just copy/pasted this whole comment, because like it so much 🙂
This is exactly the game I want to play.
The Key with EVE, UO and pre-NGE SWG was that there were beneficial game related things to do that were not combat. Combat is still core in these games, but in each of these other games, non-combat paths could be as successful as combat classes.
Take EVE. The real measure of your own success is the amount of wealth you have collected. Character growth is just a matter of time, so your own measurement and result of skill is wealth. To that end, many avenues to generate wealth exist in the game.
UO and SWG did not have as strong of economic structure, but you could measure your success based on achievements other then combat trophies.
I always have felt WoW needed downtime activities like mount racing or card games. Here’s this huge gameworld and most of the population is standing around the auction house or in Dalaran.
You make a great point, Dirtyboy, but don’t tell that to Blizzard. I’m sure they’d -love- to sell people in-game decks of cards and then booster packs on top of them…
The trick isn’t to make one aspect of the game more important than the other but instead to make all aspects interdependent upon one another. When you achieve this, you create an ecosystem where everyone is valued and needed, no matter their role (pretty much how our society works today).
“Combat PvP PvE and RvR should always be first.”
Disagree. Interaction should always be first. The reason that combat (as a form of interaction) is usually emphasized first is because it is usually the easiest to build for. We just need these other types of roles to incorporate some meaningful forms of interaction as well, so that they become just as enjoyable and valued as a whole.
My old standby example of this is the RTS game Warcraft II whereby each unit within the game was totally interdependent upon the other. Without peons to gather resources and craft building, warriors were totally screwed. Without warriors, peons would be defenseless and quickly die.
an updated version of the old star wars galaxies would be my dream come true, but then, would it be the same?
The games have changed because gamers have changed, there are far more people playing mmo’s these days.
Social gamers and the ‘old’ mmo players who used to stop and chat and semi-roleplay are diluted by a large amount of newer mmo players who want action, if SWG was remade today, would the market for it be viable? costs have gone up and competition has theoreticaly gone up, and a social game simply wont work if the world is too quiet.
Completely agree that SWG was awesome in its social conventions. Before Coronet and the MOP became the hotspots, Anchorhead was an amazing place to hang out becuz the cantina was also the hospital so you could have the docs healing wounds in there while everyone healed their mind wounds and battle fatigue. Frankly, making it so that some damage could only be healed in the cantinas and done over time (but not excessively long) was sheer genius. The entertainer people tended to be social anyway to be a) doing the class and b) they gained their xp in the cantinas and could macro it, so all that was left was socializing so they’d talk to their group and to as many as they could who came in the door.
Frankly, it was the cantinas that made the game for me. My best times in that game were with my PA of entertainers and our social events that we’d set up. The community dev Pex would even show up at our events and give out goodies. Those are the things I miss. I vaguely remember running a couple of dungeons and killing the nasty kimogilas on Lok or the Krayts on Tatooine, but hey… did that once you did it a bajillion times. The social stuff, though….. that changed with each new person you talked to.
I haven’t seen any game since with that level of socializing, not even NGE SWG. Sure NGE still has the cantina, but you just run in, buy your buff, and run back out. Meh.
Great point, Keen!
Combat should be one of several career tracks in a virtual world. Why shouldn’t there be a merchant career for those who like to buy low and sell high, manipulate markets, risk capital in long-distance trading, supply crafters with hard-to-get materials? How about a gambling career where a player could gain prestige and fortune in casinos or ‘illegal’ gambling dens? Come on devs, use your imagination!
UO and SWG were good at this approach. The greater variety of careers, the more diverse a playerbase a world has. This is a good thing because it makes things more interesting. Virtual worlds are better than theme parks for longevity.
Amen, brothah Keen!
My MMO preferences lean toward the exploration and social aspects. Anything else — combat included — is just spice in the taco. Necessary spice, but spice none-the-less. =)
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