Developers and players seek what makes a good MMO. Most of them are stuck with the “fun” concept, which is fundamentally wrong. Not because “fun” is subjective and used by veldspar miners and miner-gankers alike, but because it’s an answer attempt to a different question: “what makes a good game”. “Game” is not equal to “Massively Multiplayer Online Game”. If there is a magic constellation of pixels that is universally considered fun, you just created an awesome single player game.
Adding other players to this perfect game is just a lame excuse to enforce an always-online DRM like it happened with Diablo III. The consensus of players - now accepted by Blizzard – is that the multi-player aspect of the game (trading items) made the game significantly worse.
The above means exactly what it means: the game implementation and content (“the pixels”) are relevant in creating a good game, but in no way matter in making this single player game a better MMO. The graphics quality and content amount of the MMOs of the “golden age” are laughable by the standards of today, yet they are remembered as the golden age. The remaining players of WoW are still claiming that the grindy and graphically weak (even by 2006-10 standards) Vanilla WoW and Burning Crusade were the pinnacle. Sales numbers agree.
Every MMO could be a single player game, just have a server where you are the only player. WoW leveling wouldn’t be affected, and as all players fondly remembering his first leveling, it would be a fun game, but obviously just for one run. SW:TOR built on this concept, “the fourth pillar” and got exactly as expected: lot of players for short time. I wouldn’t bet a dime on solo EVE though.
So you have a game and want to add some Holy Grail reagent that makes it an MMO that has more revenues than the single-player version. I gladly provide you that reagent: respectful interactions between players. That’s it. The player must interact with other players he respects and feel respected by that other player.
I’d like to emphasize that it’s a developer task and not a wish towards the players “please be nice and respectful”. The developer needs to govern player interactions to create this respect. EVE Online is doing surprisingly well on this, by its sandbox approach: not enforcing players to do things they don’t like just to progress their character. The frigate loller interacts with another frigate loller. While I clearly don’t respect them, they don’t have to care, because they don’t interact with me, but with each other and they consider this interaction a “good fight”.
Similarly no one is forced to be an “F1-monkey”, which is clearly a derogatory term for large-fleet pilots. But – again – they aren’t interacting with those who call them F1-monkeys, they interact with their fleetmates and hostile large-fleet pilots. The same applies for “carebears” who are happy building things together.
My widespread unpopularity in the EVE community comes not from the way I play, but from rudely intruding the spheres of other players and forcing them to interact. It applies to the miners I gank, the “skill PvP” pilots who has to read on EN24 that I have more kills than their whole corp and the large alliance-pilots who I call out for their bombless bombers and be smug about making ISK in the magnitude of their moon collection.
World of Warcraft – despite clearly being leagues better single player game than EVE – is doing horribly on the respectful interaction front. The optimal gearing path drives players to interact with players of different playstyles. Whoever figured out that the best-in-slot legendary PvE cloak needs winning PvP battlegrounds or that raid lockouts aren’t difficulty-wide (you can – therefore for optimal performance should – complete LFR even if you did heroic that week) should be forever banned from the industry and chained to a fast-food kitchen. LFR is called “looking for retards” and the feeling of players towards each other can be clearly seen from the fact that group kickvoting had to be practically removed because it was overused. In absence of kick, the behaviors that incited the kickvotes (AFK-ing, below-healer DPS or verbal abuse) became standard, making group play a hated chore for character progression for everyone. I can’t imagine anyone enjoying an LFR run, except for purposeful trolls who pull extra packs just to grief the team.
In the “golden age” of WoW the game itself was much worse, but you could completely isolate from the “noobs” or “no-lifers” and stick to your guild where other players were likely from similar background. The poison in the Wrath of Lich King expansion wasn’t the easy content, but Dungeon Finder, a tool that was optimal for getting Valor points at the cost of forcing you to interact with random players. WoW would have much better numbers not only if the game remained in BC difficulty but also if it would switch to an easy mode, chasing away all hardcore gamers, but either way having a more homogenous playerbase. 30K DPS isn’t bad on its own. It becomes bad when the other guy has 80K on a healer spec and he is in the same raid. He will see you a worthless dead weight he is forced to carry, while you will see him an abusive asshole no-lifer intruding your relaxing activity.
For future MMO developers I’d suggest to put their focus on respectful player interactions. In discussing every feature ask “will the player respect the other players he meets here”?
For Blizzard I’d suggest to immediately create different, non-merged servers for different level and type of activities. The basic, leveling server should only have 5-man, LFR and random BG features with no means to gain Valor or Conquest points. This would be the home of “for fun” players. For normal mode raiding and Valor points one has to transfer for the normal server, where the only flexible and normal raid difficulties exist, heroic scenarios and challenge mode dungeons for smaller groups. Hard mode raiding would be on a different server which has no other raiding content (but increased Valor gain from heroic bosses). Conquest-giving PvP would be yet on a different server. In these servers somewhat homogenous communities would exist for the happiness of all.
For CCP there is still room for improvement, despite already being much better than any competition in turning a game into MMO. The problematic zone is highsec: many PvP-ers are “forced” to have highsec farmalt due to highsec being the most profitable. This should be fixed. Separating highsec Sisters LP from Nullsec Sisters LP is a good start, but 50% is way too small for incentivizing PvP-ers to earn their ISK in PvP zones. I think mining or shooting rats for an hour should give 4-5x more rewards in lowsec and 10x more in nullsec/WH than it gives in highsec. This way no PvP-er is forced to be something he hates: a highsec carebear (even if "just on an alt").
On the other hand safety in highsec should be increased. I have hundreds of mails and conversations proving that PvP combat with highsec miners doesn’t increase their gaming enjoyment. They fiercely resist the idea that they should have PvP fitting (tank) on their ship, instead they believe that their ships will be safe when I “stop being a dick”. Concord response time could be decreased and concord manipulation removed, along with awoxing and wardecs, letting these players play the way they want. Remember, they are customers too and not NPCs placed there for your enjoyment. They are right that I should go away and fight with people who can fight back, but currently I have no incentive to, as I get much more kills this way (132B solo-dualbox last month), and this is a bad design: the optimal way of getting PvP results should be ... PvP-ing and not slaying miners.
On second thought, this is a good reason to gank: to force CCP to fix highsec to unprofitable and safe, like PL forced them to fix titans by AoE-doomsdaying down a carrier.
To emphasize the necessity of making player interactions be respectful for the health of the MMO, let's see two morons who choose to pull the plug as the result of interacting with me:
Adding other players to this perfect game is just a lame excuse to enforce an always-online DRM like it happened with Diablo III. The consensus of players - now accepted by Blizzard – is that the multi-player aspect of the game (trading items) made the game significantly worse.
The above means exactly what it means: the game implementation and content (“the pixels”) are relevant in creating a good game, but in no way matter in making this single player game a better MMO. The graphics quality and content amount of the MMOs of the “golden age” are laughable by the standards of today, yet they are remembered as the golden age. The remaining players of WoW are still claiming that the grindy and graphically weak (even by 2006-10 standards) Vanilla WoW and Burning Crusade were the pinnacle. Sales numbers agree.
Every MMO could be a single player game, just have a server where you are the only player. WoW leveling wouldn’t be affected, and as all players fondly remembering his first leveling, it would be a fun game, but obviously just for one run. SW:TOR built on this concept, “the fourth pillar” and got exactly as expected: lot of players for short time. I wouldn’t bet a dime on solo EVE though.
So you have a game and want to add some Holy Grail reagent that makes it an MMO that has more revenues than the single-player version. I gladly provide you that reagent: respectful interactions between players. That’s it. The player must interact with other players he respects and feel respected by that other player.
I’d like to emphasize that it’s a developer task and not a wish towards the players “please be nice and respectful”. The developer needs to govern player interactions to create this respect. EVE Online is doing surprisingly well on this, by its sandbox approach: not enforcing players to do things they don’t like just to progress their character. The frigate loller interacts with another frigate loller. While I clearly don’t respect them, they don’t have to care, because they don’t interact with me, but with each other and they consider this interaction a “good fight”.
Similarly no one is forced to be an “F1-monkey”, which is clearly a derogatory term for large-fleet pilots. But – again – they aren’t interacting with those who call them F1-monkeys, they interact with their fleetmates and hostile large-fleet pilots. The same applies for “carebears” who are happy building things together.
My widespread unpopularity in the EVE community comes not from the way I play, but from rudely intruding the spheres of other players and forcing them to interact. It applies to the miners I gank, the “skill PvP” pilots who has to read on EN24 that I have more kills than their whole corp and the large alliance-pilots who I call out for their bombless bombers and be smug about making ISK in the magnitude of their moon collection.
World of Warcraft – despite clearly being leagues better single player game than EVE – is doing horribly on the respectful interaction front. The optimal gearing path drives players to interact with players of different playstyles. Whoever figured out that the best-in-slot legendary PvE cloak needs winning PvP battlegrounds or that raid lockouts aren’t difficulty-wide (you can – therefore for optimal performance should – complete LFR even if you did heroic that week) should be forever banned from the industry and chained to a fast-food kitchen. LFR is called “looking for retards” and the feeling of players towards each other can be clearly seen from the fact that group kickvoting had to be practically removed because it was overused. In absence of kick, the behaviors that incited the kickvotes (AFK-ing, below-healer DPS or verbal abuse) became standard, making group play a hated chore for character progression for everyone. I can’t imagine anyone enjoying an LFR run, except for purposeful trolls who pull extra packs just to grief the team.
In the “golden age” of WoW the game itself was much worse, but you could completely isolate from the “noobs” or “no-lifers” and stick to your guild where other players were likely from similar background. The poison in the Wrath of Lich King expansion wasn’t the easy content, but Dungeon Finder, a tool that was optimal for getting Valor points at the cost of forcing you to interact with random players. WoW would have much better numbers not only if the game remained in BC difficulty but also if it would switch to an easy mode, chasing away all hardcore gamers, but either way having a more homogenous playerbase. 30K DPS isn’t bad on its own. It becomes bad when the other guy has 80K on a healer spec and he is in the same raid. He will see you a worthless dead weight he is forced to carry, while you will see him an abusive asshole no-lifer intruding your relaxing activity.
For future MMO developers I’d suggest to put their focus on respectful player interactions. In discussing every feature ask “will the player respect the other players he meets here”?
For Blizzard I’d suggest to immediately create different, non-merged servers for different level and type of activities. The basic, leveling server should only have 5-man, LFR and random BG features with no means to gain Valor or Conquest points. This would be the home of “for fun” players. For normal mode raiding and Valor points one has to transfer for the normal server, where the only flexible and normal raid difficulties exist, heroic scenarios and challenge mode dungeons for smaller groups. Hard mode raiding would be on a different server which has no other raiding content (but increased Valor gain from heroic bosses). Conquest-giving PvP would be yet on a different server. In these servers somewhat homogenous communities would exist for the happiness of all.
For CCP there is still room for improvement, despite already being much better than any competition in turning a game into MMO. The problematic zone is highsec: many PvP-ers are “forced” to have highsec farmalt due to highsec being the most profitable. This should be fixed. Separating highsec Sisters LP from Nullsec Sisters LP is a good start, but 50% is way too small for incentivizing PvP-ers to earn their ISK in PvP zones. I think mining or shooting rats for an hour should give 4-5x more rewards in lowsec and 10x more in nullsec/WH than it gives in highsec. This way no PvP-er is forced to be something he hates: a highsec carebear (even if "just on an alt").
On the other hand safety in highsec should be increased. I have hundreds of mails and conversations proving that PvP combat with highsec miners doesn’t increase their gaming enjoyment. They fiercely resist the idea that they should have PvP fitting (tank) on their ship, instead they believe that their ships will be safe when I “stop being a dick”. Concord response time could be decreased and concord manipulation removed, along with awoxing and wardecs, letting these players play the way they want. Remember, they are customers too and not NPCs placed there for your enjoyment. They are right that I should go away and fight with people who can fight back, but currently I have no incentive to, as I get much more kills this way (132B solo-dualbox last month), and this is a bad design: the optimal way of getting PvP results should be ... PvP-ing and not slaying miners.
On second thought, this is a good reason to gank: to force CCP to fix highsec to unprofitable and safe, like PL forced them to fix titans by AoE-doomsdaying down a carrier.
To emphasize the necessity of making player interactions be respectful for the health of the MMO, let's see two morons who choose to pull the plug as the result of interacting with me:
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