So in a completely crazy moment, I wonder if this problem couldn’t be partially eliminated by tiering the content into larger and, more or less, equally difficult chunks. Sort of like Time Pilot, where you completed a level and moved on to the next after beating a boss and the next level was a different era in time. By tiering the mobs, everything in the beginning tier would be accessible (ie. killable) to a player from their very first step in the world.

Rather than level up the player, the character would receive skills along multiple skill trees (like spells, or combat abilities).  The player would receive no additional “hit points” or “health”

Tier advancement, to some extent, could be up to the player to decide, “Hey, I’ve had enough of this tier, time to move on.”

Mobs in a tier would all have a rating, similar to the level based system now used, the difference being that it wouldn’t be a 3-5 level range that would yield experience, but a whole slew of baddies all geared towards a bracket of characters. Setting the difficulty of encounters would now be more manageable, since all the characters would be locked in to a much smaller range of expected parameters. I am explaining this poorly, I imagine. I guess the easiest way to describe this would be that it would be like making completely separate games, in the same game.

Characters become: noobs, citizens, adventurers, heroes, elite, chosen, etc. as tiers. The player chooses when to “move up” after a certain criteria is met, but can spend time in each of the tiers as long as they wish. Each tiers will have its own set of monsters, raids, loots, etc. The difference is, the monsters in that tier will all be of the same tier as the characters and suitably difficult. No more progression of rats to bigger rats to wimpy kobold to wimpy goblin, but now rats no longer give “xp”. The first tier monsters will all be legitimate content.

Games like ‘The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion’ do this by scaling the monster difficulty to be in line with your character level. The difference here is that instead of scaling the monsters as you level up, you freeze the player at the same “level” while allowing them to collect gear and abilities to complete all the content for that tier. The gear and abilities transfer to the next tier, but would be essentially useless compared to base items and abilities in the next tier (or possibly rare items, like tier raid loot, would scale somewhat).  Players can be motivated to remain in each tier rather than simply opting-up, by: a) increasing the content in lower level tiers, b) adding titles and achievements and next-tier bonuses for completing difficult tier content, c) epic quests and raid content at each tier level (I allude to something similar here), d) making some of the most “hardcore” or challenging content part of the “end-game” for the lower tiers and lastly, e) possibly allowing players to create characters in any tier, or move between tiers at will… I’m not sure about this one yet.

I am thinking that in fact each tier might be a complete world instance of only content related to that tier. Dungeons and zones which only exist in the appropriate tier instances all hooked together with large city hubs for all tiers to mingle.

On the very first day that the server came up, I had made a human character in Qeynos and was running around in Qeynos Hills happily bashing wolves and snakes and whatever I could get my level 5 sword on when a strange thing happened: I ended up on a 30 person raid.

You see, in Norrath’s Qeynos Hills, a Necromancer named Pyzjn will rarely spawn and occasionally drops a piece of rare loot which, back in the day, used to be worth a fair bit. Unfortunately, Pyzjn is about level 14 and the highest player in the zone at the time was level 8.  But since this was an expansion server full of people who had put aside higher level characters on other servers to “re-roll” as newbies, the call to arms went out across the zone and soon we had a good part of the zone organized into an impromptu raid force.

It was a bloody fight to be sure, but in the end Pyzjn was down and there was much rejoicing (no real loot to speak of) and then about 30 seconds later everyone went back to the business of trying to level up their little characters to get up to the “end-game” part where we could do this raid thing all over again.

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I started writing this post a couple years back (timely updates are hard to come by on this blog) and at the time, I was prepared to propose some radical thinking: Why not have end game style content available at the beginning of the game? I mean, it seems as if a great majority of players try to rush through the “grind” to get to the “end game”, so I wonder if it wouldn’t be cool if instead of simply throwing chaff experience monsters in the path of otherwise brave raiding adventurers, games would present some kind of raid content (with raid level loots) throughout the course of the game instead of just all bunched up at the end?

Since having this notion, I have seen in several newer MMOs, that the impromptu raid idea has been incorporated to varying degrees of success. Warhammer and Champions Online both feature raid-style content for triggered zone events. This is a step in the right direction, I think, but they lack the intricacy of planning and strategy that dedicated raids tend to have. I know, I know… I haven’t played all MMOs out there exhaustively and I am sure this kind of thing is done on some kind of level somewhere, but I expect, at best, it is hardly the norm.

So I wonder, why not offer it as an alternative? Some reason not to simply rush through the levels to get somewhere because the somewhere to get to is right there all the time? Make the loot rewards you get at a low level scale with the character’s growth, so Bigblam’s Bow of Boffoness is a kick ass, cool-looking weapon at level 2 or 10 or 100. Just because you get it at level 2 doesn’t diminish it’s coolness, but maybe even enhances it, based on exclusivity. Imagine if many of the “best” end game weapons had to be acquired at the beginning of the game  Imagine if special titles, abilities or bonuses (like a fancy glow!) were only available at the beginning of the game. Then what kind of paradigm have you introduced?

This isn’t the same as making people jump through “advancement quests” or grab “zone keys” as hurdles to slow leveling. Getting cool loot, or titles is purely an optional exercise, but at some point in most MMOs, that’s what people are looking to do. Making it available at the beginning and middle could help reduce the over-emphasis on the whole rush to the “end-game” idea.

In the old V&V game, a player could drop one of their super-powers to rid themselves of their character’s weakness and I believe that most people who play choose to do that. Weaknesses are a liability and most of us have at least one in real life and would rather not deal with weaknesses in a game which is supposed to be “fun.” In fact it seems like it may be a big taboo to even suggest game elements which might not, on the surface, contribute to immediate and enduring fun. And who in their right mind would confuse a weakness with fun?

I might.

Professor Xavier, wheelchair bound and all, is one of the most powerful X-Men. The otherwise impervious Superman has a weakness to kryptonite. Daredevil is blind. Are these just silly plot devices or critical pieces which define the character?

Some developers would argue that no one would want an adventurer who only had one arm, was afraid of heights, had asthma, or was a clutz, right? But what if that disability was offset by some other superlative talent and players were given the choice of choosing the safe path of no disability, or the mixed bag of good and bad.

Okay, maybe dungeon crawling would be tough for a character with claustrophobia, and maybe no one would want to drag along a haemophilic warrior as the main tank, but I think just the idea of those types of characters existing is intriguing as heck.

Some games have offered ways that the engine itself could flag players for bad behavior, but I’m proposing a whole new mechanism for black-balling and/or sucking up to people facilitated by the game.

What I am saying is that a system could be implemented which is similar to the one used on eBay, whereby people could rate group and or guild mates. Those ratings might help a group decide if prospective invitees are a good fit for their purposes.
Will this warrior fight on even as the last man standing? Does this rogue pull too much aggro? Does this jedi run when the battle hangs in the balance?

In most games, one has to wade through the archives of message board posts to get this kind of opinion and the reality is that most gamers never find their way to the appropriate message boards for whatever game/server they are playing. Using this system helps establish some degree of accountability for behavior and skill and provides a global voice for those who have had experience with a player to express it and have a pretty good chance that their opinions will be seen by others who might consider the merits of the individual’s prior reputation in the decision making process.

In my example it would work like this:

1. First-hand ratings only – in order to rate someone you would need to be a) in a group with them or b) in a guild with them
2. 3-tier rating – positive, neutral, negative plus a limited comment field.
3. Ratings are visible to all – special menu option to view ratings on queried player.
4. Your name goes with your rating – don’t like someone? Well, expect them to ask you about it.
5. Rating is changeable – each time you a) group or b) guild with a person, you may alter your rating.
6. One rating per character – That’s it. No spamming of +’s or -’s.
7. Ratings displayed by most recent first – Chance for redemption / remediation over time and the number of total ratings could be capped with the oldest rolling off the list.

The argument could be made that a system like this might seem to be a totally artificial construct and not fit the nature of most MMORPGs, which is a valid point. I believe that something like this, however, is simply a community empowering tool without a true downside.

Will it be used in some circumstances for griefing a player’s reputation? Certainly.
Might it curb some of the asshole behavior which is typical in many games? I’d like to think so.
Is this a fairly controversial idea which could polarize a potential player base? Heh, heh, heh… who knows ?

Good thing the developers have let me know that it’s a Greater Osterampusaur that I was about to trip over because lord knows I would have hated to accidentally call it, “some weird lizard thing that attacked me.”

Maybe it’s just me, but I think it might be neat if the developers left it up to their communities to come up with names for the monsters in the world. Different communities or different players might call the monsters different things adding another level of mystery, discovery and also player ownership to the game. It seems to me that whole groups of players from the various servers would collaborate to come up with a comprehensive naming system. Discoverers might want to name things after themselves. I’m sure some of the discussions over the names would become quite heated. What fun!

Sure, it adds an extra wrinkle when writing Lore and assigning quests, it could complicate the “consider” system most games have in place, but shouldn’t present any major problems which couldn’t be overcome with a little planning.

A developer might call this a “Crocursiniphant,” but what might you call it if it didn’t have a little tag floating over it’s head?
(Besides a pretty crappy looking creature, that is)

I think I’ll call it a noobinator.

Want to have monsters drop occasional worthwhile loot, that’s cool – let the campers get a reward every once in a while, but I am thinking that to drive experience, characters should have to talk to people, take part in a lesson, learn a skill, complete pilgrimages, touch magic rocks, view the massing of an army, witness the execution of a mentor…

So, instead of simply having quests which contribute a little experience to the pool, but are seldom as efficient as just hanging around killing hordes of nameless minions, characters should also get advancement quests which must be completed to, you know… advance.

Developers and gamers alike complain that players rush through content to get to the end and miss a great deal of the handiwork and effort the folks who made the game sunk into it. Well, I think that if instead of catering to the players who are content to just sit and kill boars in the forest all day, the game should reward players who take in more of the game content. Many games have implemented gateway quests for zone access and in some cases for leveling access, but in most cases they were implemented as a tacked on series of hoops for the player to jump through after proceeding through other parts of the game in a more traditional (read: grinding) way. In order to take hold and not be simply rejected out of hand by the players, this system must be executed well.

The way I am envisioning this working is something like the Boy Scouts merit badge system. A player needs to complete a certain number of pre-set quests to achieve a level and by completing each quest, would learn an ability, skill or bonus. Players could choose to level after the completion of the minimum number of quests, or continue on to finish all of the quests and gain the remaining skills, etc. Or in some cases completing one quest would cancel the ability to do another, which could result in skill tree or bonus diversity.

The quests for players to finish could be quite varied to appeal to the interests of all players: craft, explore, kill a specific mob, etc. so long as each would be a reasonable approximation of the others. Rewards should be in line with the type of quest accomplished and difficulty.

Anticipated Positives:

• No level penalty for non-combatants. If players could gain equivalent advancement from other activities, crafters, wanderers, traders and socializers rather than those activities just being wasted time in-game.
• No more exp debt/lost exp nonsense. Quest is either done, or not.
• No need for unnecessary mob camps everywhere… just because. World design is enhanced by the designers only needing to add mobs for aesthetics, to regulate travel and quest objectives.
• More player exposure to content. If the quests force players out of their “camping” habits and into new parts of the world, players will see more of it.

Anticipated Negatives:

• Players don’t like to be told what to do. Most players want to play the game they want to play it, so forcing them to complete a series of quests as the only path to advance is going to upset some if you aren’t mindful of the types of things they would want to do when you set the quests down.
• Players like to be told how to do something. After the first few players complete quests, the walk-throughs will be on the internet. Also on the internet will be an assessment on which quests give the best return on investment for time spent, etc. If the quests aren’t incredibly balanced, all characters will simply do the same quests. Re: Everquest epics.
• Without some built in limiting/enabling mechanism, like mob kills/exp ratio, but a simple pass/fail litmus test, leveling for different players could be drastically different in difficulty and hard to predict an average level/time curve.
• Expansions to the original game become much harder to implement for lower level content. There will be a great hue and cry for those who will not be able to get the low level rewards of new content if they are in the form of new abilities, skills or bonuses which form a new tree, or scale up over time.
• Would likely limit the casual player. Without care, casual players might be hurt by a leveling model like this. Would there be something to do for someone only logging in for 30 minutes?

Could a system like this work? I’m not sure. While in Everquest the Epic weapon quests were incredibly painful, there were a great many players who endured them to get their shiny doo-hickey in the end. But in EQ2, the citizen quest each player needed to finish in order to level up after the newbie island and many of the quests to access different world zones were discarded as an unnecessary annoyance.

I think in order not to fail immediately, though, the keys would be that the expectation of the play-style has to be set early on, and the rewards have to be worth the extra effort.

More than just a log of whom you have slain, although that would be nice too, the computer could keep track where you went, who you went with and what you did in somewhat of a story-type form, with maybe even an automatically added screenshot or two, which the player could peruse, edit, and post for others to read. Not just a posting of the damage numbers and the /ooc banter, but a real story-like approach with the player as the central character for the entirety of his/her career.

It’s a leap to expect the computer to be a very good story-teller, or that this kind of thing would be something other people would clamor to read on the first try, but I’ve yet to even see an attempt at it. At the very least, it would be a cool starting point for characters to build their own biographies out of and at best it might be incorporated into the lore of the game itself.