Gear reliance in MMO's, simple solution(s).

[Ingmar]

Wouldn't that mean raiding is unfun and is a horrible game mechanic if it needs to be propped up with rewards? God mmo's are backward.

If there's any content at all in a game that DOES offer a reward, you have to put a reward of some kind or another on everything if you want it to be used. Raiding could be the most fun thing ever, but it would be hard to stop people from grinding foozles to go do a raid if the foozles offered a more tangible reward than fun.

[AutomaticZen]

Wouldn't that mean raiding is unfun and is a horrible game mechanic if it needs to be propped up with rewards? God mmo's are backward.

No, it just means that most people play through PVE content once or twice for fun.  Like if they were playing Mass Effect or something.  Add having to figure out the logistics of getting 10+ people together, and it becomes less fun.  Hell, getting people for a 5-Man in WoW can sometimes be a chore.  But if you did everything by yourself, you might as well play a single player game and save you $15.  And even then, I'm not playing Mass Effect again.  Which means in an MMO, they get no monthly fee.  They need you to pull the slot machine as many times as possible.

Raiding needs better rewards not because it's harder skillwise, but because it's a pain in the ass getting people together and keeping them together. 

[IainC]

Wouldn't that mean raiding is unfun and is a horrible game mechanic if it needs to be propped up with rewards? God mmo's are backward.

The first rule of MMO social design is that if there are two options in front of a player, one of which maximises fun and the other which maximises reward then the players will almost exclusively do the second while complaining that there is no fun in the game.

[Fordel]

The second rule is the developer will never put the reward on the fun activity.

[pxib]

The second rule is the developer will never put the reward on the fun activity.

Not exactly. "Fun" is relative: what I enjoy, another player finds dull and frustrating. This wouldn't be a problem except that Rule One declares that whichever activity provides the reward will attract the players. No matter how much I might have loved it before, stuffing it full of people who despise it but are going through the motions in order to gain advantage drains the fun out of anything.

[AutomaticZen]

The second rule is the developer will never put the reward on the fun activity.

Not exactly. "Fun" is relative: what I enjoy, another player finds dull and frustrating. This wouldn't be a problem except that Rule One declares that whichever activity provides the reward will attract the players. No matter how much I might have loved it before, stuffing it full of people who despise it but are going through the motions in order to gain advantage drains the fun out of anything.

Indeed.  'Grinding' is the repetitive task that you don't want to do to get to the reward you want.  The task changes from person to person. 

Raiding might be more fun if you could do it solo, but then a great number of people would.  Which would lead them to ask... why am I paying you?

[damijin]

didn't read the thread, but original post is all tail wagging the dog backwards.

I mean, for starters, gear reliance isn't a problem. Secondly, if it was a problem, it wouldn't exist because gear is somehow essential to MMO design, gear reliance exists because players want gear reliance (to a point).

They want to advance their character and get cooler and cooler shit that makes them stronger and stronger. It's a huge part of what makes MMOs fun. If you consider that a 'problem' then you probably consider levels a 'problem' too, and either shouldnt be designing MMOs, or are going to make a bland piece of horseshit.

[Votan]

I hate the idea of raiding for gear. Hate hate hate. You should raid because it's fun, because you enjoy raiding. Not because you need to play the same fucking content six times for every member of your guild to get everyone equipped.

I'd try replacing raid loot with crafting recipes that allow you to build the rewards as many times as you want. Each copy made might require a trophy that drop >50% of the time from every mob in the raid - not just the boss(es). Every copy is flagged bound to members of the crafter's guild (as the time of creation).

The problem with this lies in that you can only design so much content, players will always consume more content especially once a game reaches the point of maturity than developers can effectively put in the game.  You need something to keep players doing the content available till you are able to introduce new content.

You could design the raid instance of raid instances and give players the ultimate “wow” factor but that only last for a certain period of time, once players “beat” the content what is the “need” to repeat it, what is the carrot to keep players doing the same content till you can release more?   

While recipe drops and components is a good idea, if you have at a 50% drop rate or greater from every mob to drop the crafting component as your example, usable by every class, you have just made your ultimate raid instance short lived.  If you have it to where it is class specific and a low drop rate you are not really changing anything only replacing the grind for the leet glowey weapon of doom that has a 1% drop rate with recipes and components.

Unless you are super company and plan on releasing large amounts of content in a very short window on a very regular basis, this just will not keep players having the fun you are suggesting, because players will do it just for fun a few times, or till they have “beaten” it, after that it becomes the same old and no longer “fun” and you will have to have fresh content ready and waiting or you are going to start losing your player base to other games, and you may or may not get them back when you get to releasing new content.

[Stormwaltz]

You need something to keep players doing the content available till you are able to introduce new content.

Not to repeat what others have already said, but I think what should keep players doing the content is the content being fun.

If someone enjoys grinding for the sake of grinding, fine.There are plenty of Korean MMORPGs for them. I'm 34 now, not 25. My design goals have changed. I want to entertain players, not beat them in a contest of my level design vs. their ingenuity, or punish them with a marathon steeplechase.

[ezrast]

So why hasn't someone made an MMO where the content (including gear) is procedurally generated? Conceptually, you could do away with caps altogether and just make a system that scales to infinity for a neverending supply of ding-grats. Realistically you would want some kind of cap, for PvP parity if nothing else, but there's no reason for content in MMOs to be as static as it is. At very least, randomize the loot tables so that if I need one piece of gear, I have more than just one boss to kill over and over to get it.

[Stormwaltz]

So why hasn't someone made an MMO where the content (including gear) is procedurally generated?

AC1 was overwhelmingly procedurally generated loot. As time's passed, it's gained more and more quest items.

Content is a tougher row to hoe, due to sheer complexity. AO experimented with it. Back in the day I designed a procedural task system for Ninth Domain (don't bother looking for info on it; it died in the first trimester and was mourned by few), largely inspired by the LucasArts Desktop Adventures games.

[Ingmar]

So why hasn't someone made an MMO where the content (including gear) is procedurally generated? Conceptually, you could do away with caps altogether and just make a system that scales to infinity for a neverending supply of ding-grats. Realistically you would want some kind of cap, for PvP parity if nothing else, but there's no reason for content in MMOs to be as static as it is. At very least, randomize the loot tables so that if I need one piece of gear, I have more than just one boss to kill over and over to get it.

I don't know how well Diablo-style drops (Boss X drops random loot from a huge table) would work with an MMO (speaking in terms of the 'fixed' loot in Diablo, not the random stuff.) I mean, if you're targeting one piece of gear, it might be better to take your 25% shot once per day than a .5% shot from every boss, in terms of your own time management. A world-wide boss loot table would be better for the people who spend hours at it a day, but significantly worse for the people who just do one dungeon a night or whatever.

[Tarami]

Procedural content is balls, that's why. Even Diablo 2 is not as procedural as it makes out to be. You're still in a specific act, killing a specific boss, which drops a certain range of items. All the interesting things in Diablo were fixed (Horadric cube, runewords, skills et.c.) It's just the same thing most dikus do, just turned on its head making people focus on the generator patterns instead of the game design patterns. People figure out what parameters they will have to feed the system in order to produce a benefical result. In short, if you remove all the hand-tuned and hand-crafted things, you'll end up with a dish of bland with sauce blandnaise. A system that always does everything "half right, half wrong" and never "mostly right" the way hand-crafted content can.

[ezrast]

Honestly, the inclusion of so much unique loot in Diablo 2 always perplexed me. It makes sense for quest rewards and trinket-like things with special effects but I don't see the point in having such a wide variety of randomly generated items if in the end you're not going to be wearing any of it anyway. That is, I do see the point, I just think the point would be pointier if everybody and their armor maintained their unique snowflakeosity throughout the endgame.

Would Diablo 2 be better if the dungeons were handcrafted and the same every time?

[Ingmar]

Honestly, the inclusion of so much unique loot in Diablo 2 always perplexed me. It makes sense for quest rewards and trinket-like things with special effects but I don't see the point in having such a wide variety of randomly generated items if in the end you're not going to be wearing any of it anyway. That is, I do see the point, I just think the point would be pointier if everybody and their armor maintained their unique snowflakeosity throughout the endgame.

Would Diablo 2 be better if the dungeons were handcrafted and the same every time?

But they essentially are - the only thing that really changes is the layout and some minor changes in monster assortment, and that doesn't change so much as to make the experience more than trivially different. The 'important' stuff is all fixed. This dungeon always has Mephisto in it, etc. The loot is all over the place, but then again I can kill Pindleskin a lot more times in an hour than I can Kel'Thuzad.

[Tarami]

Drops were 95% rubbish, 4% decent and 1% good. That was also 100% made-up statistics, but you get the point. So drops weren't very random, they were almost exclusively crap, which is very demoralizing for someone not in the mood for another twenty instance runs.

[Nebu]

Keep in mind that drops in any game only become rubbish when you get one of the good drops. Until then, all drops seem good.  It's an illusion of sorts.

It's like the experience in WoW beta where you would agonize over which green drop to use.  Then you'd get a blue drop and feel stupid that you ever worried about it in the first place. 

[ezrast]

Maybe it's just me, but I think a little diversity goes a long way to keeping the game interesting. We're going to be doing 20 instance runs per upgrade either way; I'd rather run 20 different instances and find a sweet random thing that nobody else has than run the same instance 20 times, be the 150,000th person to get Bob's Axe of Wildebeest Slaying, and then never set foot in that dungeon again.

edit: Also, no fixed items means no absolute best in slot gear, which means even top geared players can still strive for better loot.

[Nebu]

Unique loot makes game balance more difficult than it already is.  It also penalizes players that come to the game late.  Why?  Unique loot implies that noone else can have the same item.  Once you get a unique item, that is like checking that item off a list.  If you're the 1,000th person to get a unique item, what does the next person get?

[Tarami]

Problem is that while you might do twenty runs of one instance out of ten for one particular item right now, in a random system you'll end up doing two-hundred runs in the same or one of very few instance(s) that have the best time:reward ratio. Shortest distance to the first boss, most bosses per yard or whatever the criteria might be. See: Mephisto-runs.

Fake-edit:
I don't think he meant actually unique. I think he just meant "possibly unique" as the stats are random.

Real edit! Grammar snake!

[Ingmar]

Random loot also takes away a balance tool from devs, it should be noted. When you can fully design loot with the exact stats and benefits you want to appear on it for a given class or whatever, you have much tighter balance control than you do with a random system it seems to me.

[ezrast]

I've been using unique in the Diablo sense; that is, unique loot has fixed stats and is actually less unique than randomly generated loot. It was "unique" in Diablo because it could come with stat combinations that normal items couldn't have, not because there couldn't be more than one of them. In this sense, every purple item in WoW is unique.

Problem is that while you might do twenty runs of one instance out of ten for one particular item right now, in a random system you'll end up doing two-hundred runs in the same or one of very few instance(s) that have the best time:reward ratio. Shortest distance to the first boss, most bosses per yard or whatever the criteria might be. See: Mephisto-runs.

This is just a tuning issue, though. Drop rates can always be adjusted so meaningful rewards are plentiful and distributed evenly. Even if they can't, other means can be used to incentivize unpopular dungeons.

Random loot also takes away a balance tool from devs, it should be noted. When you can fully design loot with the exact stats and benefits you want to appear on it for a given class or whatever, you have much tighter balance control than you do with a random system it seems to me.

Yes, but it also creates just one more place to have flaws in the balancing. At least with random loot, when somebody out-dpses you you can just blame it on bad luck. Then it's neither your fault nor the dev's.

[IainC]

Random loot also takes away a balance tool from devs, it should be noted. When you can fully design loot with the exact stats and benefits you want to appear on it for a given class or whatever, you have much tighter balance control than you do with a random system it seems to me.

If you have a class/archetype based system then you can get around that by having per class stat caps to prevent any egregious extremes. If you don't have any class or archetype systems then your point is valid.

[ezrast]

stat caps

Gear is more than just stats, though. Caps can't solve the issue of balancing a 15% chance to drain 500 life over 10 seconds against +10% mana regeneration and lowering your target's armor by 100.

Yes, I'm arguing against my own side here.

edit: Oh hey, this point actually addresses the original thread topic, too. Score!

[Ingmar]

Random loot also takes away a balance tool from devs, it should be noted. When you can fully design loot with the exact stats and benefits you want to appear on it for a given class or whatever, you have much tighter balance control than you do with a random system it seems to me.

If you have a class/archetype based system then you can get around that by having per class stat caps to prevent any egregious extremes. If you don't have any class or archetype systems then your point is valid.

But wouldn't stat caps plus random stats on gear create an optimization nightmare for players? I guess it depends on how complicated your stat system is to start with.

[Sheepherder]

I mean, for starters, gear reliance isn't a problem.

Ward gear.

If you want to troll here come up with something that isn't utterly shortbus.  And no, blurring the lines by using mechanics other than straight-up resistances doesn't help, it just means that players set arbitrary boundaries for exclusion when they're setting up a group when they don't have a "cap" or "requirement" they can use for exclusion.  Or are you going to inform me that splitting your player base is good in an MMO?

They want to advance their character and get cooler and cooler shit that makes them stronger and stronger. It's a huge part of what makes MMOs fun. If you consider that a 'problem' then you probably consider levels a 'problem' too, and either shouldnt be designing MMOs, or are going to make a bland piece of horseshit.

1. Guild Wars.  Because people will work for gear just for looks.
2. People want better, it doesn't have to be all the time.  See option #3, which rewards getting geared with drastically improved solo capability.
3. Levels are a problem.  See the sidekicking in CoX, proposed for Guild Wars 2, and scenarios in Warhammer.


The above few posts is why I like the idea of class buffs being placed on gear.  You could do it randomly, and it wouldn't hurt because you're sort of expecting those buffs, and if you play with the idea of similar buffs excluding each other or with the notion that similar buffs only stack a certain number of times (ten unique strength buffs in game, you can only have three at once) you can keep a modicum of sanity.  Alternatively, making it so that stacking a few stats across your entire set is impossible (maybe only weapons give +damage buffs, armor only gives longevity stats) would solve some of these issues.

And yes, really complex systems of stats are a pain in the ass.