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All Raids Should Be Flexible

June 11, 2013 by 15 Comments

wow flexible raids

Three days ago Blizzard announced a new raiding difficulty: Flexible Raids.  Flexible falls between Looking for Raid and Normal difficulty, and scales depending on the number of players you bring along. You can bring 11, 12, 13, etc., and the content will scale in difficulty.  I think flexible raiding is a wonderful idea, and I wish it would replace the entire themepark raiding system.

I know I’m probably alone where I stand on themepark MMOs and their end-game content. I think that if I can bring 12 people to a raid, and you can bring 20, that doesn’t entitle you to better loot.  Blizzard obviously agreed when they equalized all loot drops between 10 and 25 man modes.

I would love if every raid was equal difficulty: Challenging.  Why should anyone feel forced to take more people for better loot?  Why should anyone feel forced to only have 10 people they want to raid with?  No matter the size of your group of friends, I think the difficulty should scale and be flexible, but the loot should all be the same — after all, if the difficulty is equal regardless of numbers, the loot should equal the challenge and be equal for everyone.  I think the only exception is a looking for raid environment where you throw a bunch of people together who don’t know each other; this one I’m okay with being significantly easier with a lower grade of loot.  Let that be a learning tier or an ultra casual tier.

Hard modes can and should still exist.  Hard modes should provide better loot.  They are hard and should provide a challenge for groups to aspire toward.  These shouldn’t be 40-man raids, or designed to be inaccessible.  If one group can bring 14 people to a hard mode then that 14 people should be challenged just as hard as a group who with 25, and if a group of 100 wants to do a hard mode together then they should be challenged at the same level as the hard mode 10.  That is the beauty of flexible raiding.

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ZeniMax: TESO not a MMO … sorta

June 5, 2013 by 21 Comments

This is why community managers are so important: The Elder Scrolls Online Game Director Matt Firor is quoted in an interview today saying the following:

“This is more a multiplayer Elder Scrolls game than an MMO. [You'll see] very limited UI, nice and clean, not a lot of bars.. the combat system is very much action-based. It’s also soloable… you can solo almost the entire game. [...]” [Source]

TESO not MMO

Solo the entire game in this mostly multiplayer RPG MMO.

He has a point.  TESO has already been outed as highly-instanced, and that’s not the first time Firor has come out to saying the entire game is soloable.  The thought crossed my mind to go to their site and look for any references at all to TESO being a MMO, and sure enough I wasn’t able to find a single reference; not that there’s much info on their site at all, though.  But they haven’t really been honest in their marketing either.  ZeniMax has taken every opportunity to feed major MMO sites with TESO info, their videos emphasize MMO, and the beta application is clearly MMO bait.  Ask 9/10 people and they’ll tell you TESO is going to be a MMO.

I should be really happy, though.  I don’t want TESO to be an MMO.  TESO should never even have hinted at MMO design, even in the vaguest possible sense.  They should have always marketed and designed TESO to be a multiplayer RPG.  If TESO even smells like a MMO then it will be judged like one, and I can already tell you the crippling wave of fear is settling in on the ZeniMax team, likely fueling the backpeddaling, that being a MMO and falling short of the mark will be the kiss of death.

Someone needs to take charge and get the MMO community some much needed clarification.  You’re confusing the hell out of people, Zenimax.  You’re sending mixed messages, designing it like a themepark MMO, but calling it multiplayer RPG.  TESO has SWTOR written all over it, and that’s horrifying.

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MMO Alts

May 30, 2013 by 13 Comments

mmo altsI have a serious love-hate relationship with alts.  For years, and years, and years I was an altaholic.  I went to meetings, got back on my feet, and eventually began playing just one character.  But while thinking about this topic tonight, I realized since then I’ve stopped enjoying MMOs as much.  Have you seen the new seasons of Arrested Development?  I seriously heard that exact “coincidence” whisper in the air; but is it really a coincidence? Maeby you can think on that while I continue.

There’s this awesomeness about alts.  Just knowing that I can replay through a game as another class, or go another path and have the same amount of fun makes me instantly feel good about playing.  It’s like I’ve justified my purchase in some extraordinary way.  If a game is good enough to play through again, it must be something special.  I want alts to once again be this joyful indulgence for me.  I want to feel like I can’t possibly reach max level if I don’t stop playing all of my alts and pick one to focus on.  That’s an awesome problem, but one I’m having less and less.

Not every game should allow alts, though.  I think Star Wars Galaxies is a great example of how you can have the best of both worlds.  One character.  Only one.  You can be whatever you want on that character if you put in the time, and if you want to switch then start unlearning and go down a new path.  This kept class population in check, and gave people real decisions to make.  It was like being able to play all my alts at once.

But lately I hate the concept of alts.  Alts replace the role other people are supposed to play.  People think they don’t need to rely on someone else because they can just roll an alt and fill that role.  Alts devolve into twinks that just burn through content and make me question if I really loved playing the first time through.  Alts are this defense people throw up when someone says they ran out of things to do — “Have you leveled an alt yet?”  I can’t even find a single class I like in most MMOs these days.  I end up hitting the max level and hit a rock and a hard place: I don’t like any of the class choices -and- I don’t want to go through the content.

I’m really conflicted.  Maybe the devolution of MMOs is to blame, or maybe there haven’t been any really good games to play alts in for a while. Some people will chime in almost instantly that they still struggle with the urge to play so many alts  (you know who are) and can’t understand where I’m coming from.  I can’t identify with that position when it only takes 20 hours to reach max level, and I could have every class to the max in a few weeks if the game was really worth playing through all over again.

What are your thoughts on alts?  Do away with them entirely and improve the overall experience?  Bring back the old EQ way of doing it where alts were a serious work because leveling anything required you to commit?  WoW’s method of cranking out alts? Maybe this all boils down to me wanting to enjoy a MMO more, and for a longer period of time.

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MMO Crafting

May 27, 2013 by 12 Comments
MMO Crafting

Having your crew craft for you fits the setting really well, but the execution and implementation falls back on the waiting game mixed with WoW’s material combining simplicity.

MMO crafting hasn’t seen a lot of innovation for quite some time.  In fact, I think crafting has slowly been sliding to a worse state or neglected entirely by the latest generation. The complexity, depth, scope, involvement, and opportunity (I think most of those mean the same thing) of the SWG and EVE era are all but gone.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but that depth has been replaced with tacked crafting that is repetitive and mostly meaningless.

Crafting in a contemporary MMO falls into two categories: (1) Throw in the mats and press combine, and/or (2) Passive, waiting game.

WoW’s throw in the mats and press combine has been shared across everything from LotRO to GW2 and SWTOR.  The light mini-game style of Vanguard and EQ2 is only a variation on a theme.  Then there’s this fixation on ‘professions’.  If you want to be a Leatherworker you probably have to be a Skinner.  It’s very prescribed, very scripted (everyone makes x widgets before getting to the next tier).  Crafting is about leveling and ‘maxing out’ and obtaining recipes, and if you’re lucky they throw in some whack-a-mole gimmick to distract you for all of two seconds.

Crafting in almost every MMO for the last 8 years has been a selfish endeavor.  People craft for themselves because there’s one or two good recipes they hope to get one day.  Most of the time it isn’t about the items at all, but the bonuses associated with that profession.  Few people craft for others, and few games restrict people so that you can’t craft everything — do everything –  for yourself.

I’d like something new and more creative.  I want to see crafting involve more customization, more free-form individuality.  What if MMO crafting was more like Minecraft where we put things in and shaped the items ourselves? Why can’t we have a system where no two items are alike, and I can experiment and become well-known for the way I make the weapons?  I want crafting to impact the ecosystem.  I want the world to change because Legolasers crafted something magnificent and suddenly we find ourselves having to adapt.

Crafting can be about more than making items.  Trade can shape the world.  Someone should start innovating on what should be one of the most influential and powerful game mechanics rather than forgetting about it or tacking it on at the end.

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