Because We Demand It: 10 Things Our Online Games Should Have
1. PVP and PVE balance
Dismiss one play style or the other at your own peril. There is a reason that games like Call of Duty have single player campaigns, and World of Warcraft has battlegrounds. Both styles of game play provide a good mix of experiences for the player, and draw a wider range of gamers to a given title. Having both in an online game seems just about mandatory for today’s games.
2. Apprentice/Sidekick System
For games with level based progression, this is vital. This has more to do with traditional MMORPG style games than anything, but with a max level will ultimately have an end game to suit that level of player and probably some alternate method of progression to go with it. For new players that come into a game where the player base is already mature, a sidekick/apprentice system is a godsend. While you might still be largely left to toil away at your questing and mob killing anyway, you don’t always have to be left out of the fun your higher level friends are having.These systems aren’t perfect, but still very needed. Even if your level and statistics are bumped up to your friend’s level, your gear or available skills are usually still that of the lowbie that you actually are. In the end, you are usually a weaker version of those who are actually at the level you’ve been brought up to be. There’s no developer that has pulled this off flawlessly (yet) but it is much better than not having the option to run that higher level content at all.
3. Single Realm/World
While it is naive to think that these types of games are actually only supported by a single physical server, some games only offer one world/realm/shard selection. They do this with with a complex configuration of servers, and it usually necessitates heavy use of instancing. While some game developers pull it off better than others, there’s no mistaking that dealing with a bunch of instances or “zoning” is a headache for some players.
See games like Eve Online and Champions Online (among others) for examples of such server architecture.
4. Addons, Scripting and Macros
Popular MMO’s that provide this to their members immediately feed a subculture of gamers that can extend an MMO to bring in features the development team didn’t think about, or have the time to do. Blizzard has to be the best example of a game developer with a great mod and macro/scripting community that has taken many of the most popular ideas for mods and actually integrated them into the base game’s UI. At minimum, a robust (yet hard to exploit) scripting system should be available to make macros.I realize many developers don’t like providing such a thing, as it provides an open door for exploiters and mods that violate the developer’s intended way of playing the game. WoW wrestled with this, and made many changes to the API used to build such mods and macros so that they couldn’t be used to automate too much of the game. Some developers don’t provide these things at all, or in a very limited (read: useless) capacity. Its a tough thing to implement well, and getting it right is key.
See World of Warcraft as the best example here.
5. Robust Inventory Management
Inventory is usually something that most games struggle to get right, because it involves so much. Your character’s personal inventory, personal bank, guild bank and even player housing can provide alot of storage options. Something as basic as getting the character’s personal storage right is key. If you game design chooses to provide the player with multiple opportunities to obtain items, give them a way to sort this items based on the methods they were obtained. Crafting items stored in a crafting tab, quest items in a quest item tab, loot in the loot tab, etc.
See Warhammer Online for a well sorted inventory, and from what I’m hearing from Werit, Fallen Earth’s character inventory management is even better since it lets the player build their own views of inventory based on filters they choose. Now that’s what I call good design!
6. Robust Guild Management Tools
MMO’s are social games. The people you play with can make or break the experience, and make lifelong subscribers or send people back to consoles or single player games. That said, it is vital to have tools in an MMO which facilitate the management of players, events and items for all the players in your guild/clan/team.
Guilds should be able to schedule events and invite guild players to those vents to manage attendance in raids. They should be able to recruit with tools in game, taking and evaluating applications and inviting/promoting players. Access to guild banks and other perks should be available. Guild leveling tied to bonuses or perks is a fantastic thing to have in game. See Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft, EverQuest II for examples of how this is done very well.
7. Perks and achievements
While I personally care little for achievements in games, I know I am the exception to the rule. Players love having these small bits of recognition to strive toward, and from a developer’s perspective it adds longevity to your game, which is always good. As Blizzard has proved with it’s achievement system, even an older game can be given such a system.
8. Integrated Voice chat, anti-cheat ware, update management, digital distribution, social networking and game play recording
These are all awesome features by themselves. I’ve bundled them together here because there are already a few platforms out there that bring every single one of these to the table already. Every game needs something to help manage player profiles, provide matchmaking capabilities (where applicable), manage their games, and to help players find and play with friends. I can provide no better example of this than Valve’s Steam. Blizzard plans to roll out a similar tool with their revamped Battle.net, and Xfire seems to be moving in this direction as well. Having one place to log in and manage your games, your profile, groups you belong to (and much more) just brings so much value to the gaming experience that it is a must.
You also need tools to fight cheaters. Blizzard has the controversial Warden. Valve has VAC. Others use Punkbuster, Hackshield, Gameguard or something similar. Every online game needs a security measure built in, otherwise the cheating/hacking twirps of the world will begin running rampant in game. Wall hacks, teleporting, speed hacks, currency and item duplication exploits are all things that will very quickly send the game into ruination if left unchecked. Having the game’s launcher or other game management platform (think Steam) manage updates and patches to the game are also so very useful that they should be key parts of the game upon release, especially if you need to quickly distribute a patch to fix an exploit.
Recording game play from within the game is not a tried and true feature for online games. However, the explosion of video sites and game related videos posted to them makes this something I’d personally like to see every online game provide. New games like APB are setting themselves apart by adding the capability to record moments of the game and seamlessly add them to YouTube. How cool is it to catch your guild downing a boss or capping that critical capture point for bragging rights? Screenshots don’t do justice to the action in most games.
You need a platform to build and supply these services. Basically, you need Steam or something like it associated with your game. Not only are many MMO’s sold via Steam, but some new ones are Steam Powered, meaning the game itself is integrated with Steam’s features and benefit from all the platform brings to the table.
9. Game Integrated Web Site and Services and Apps
This probably has alot to do with the item above, as a full platform of tools like Steam would help with this, but not fully. Features that should be offered like realm transfer (hopefully not necessary, see the single realm/shard paragraphs above), faction transfer, character customization change, name change, and other associated services should be available. Character, guild, and item look ups should available along with zone, quest, skill/spell abilities, and bestiary. See everquest2players.com and wowarmory.com for wonderful examples of how to extend an MMO to the web. Consider a mobile phone app out there too, as Fallen Earth and World of Warcraft have done.
10. Variety of subscription/payment options
Last but certainly not least, flexible payment options are needed. Many people are tired of being tethered to a $15.00 a month subscription fee, as it may limit their ability to play multiple games. Others like buffet style pricing and don’t want to feel “nickle-and-dimed” by item shops and constant sales pitches. Modern games need to be flexible enough to provide both, lowering the barrier to entry to everyone yet still proving the stability of established subscription games. I can find no better example of this than Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Do you agree or disagree with these items? What features do you want to see in your games?
- br3ntbr0
It’s a good list.
I agree with many things you’ve said, but have to disagree with a lot as well. Figure running down the list is the easiest way to go about it.
1. definitely agree. PvP is what drives me and I could care less about PvE, but there needs to be a nice balance there.
2. totally agree. and as an aside, i don’t think WoW has it because WoW doesn’t need it. So easy to level, especially if you have a high level friend to help you.
3. While it’s very nice to have a single realm/shard, personally i would rather have multiples than a heavily instanced game. i also don’t think it’s realistic to believe a game with as many players as WoW (not that that will happen often) could exist with only one.
4. have to disagree. a little customization is always nice, but personally a big deterrent to playing WoW or WAR again is all the mods. I hate that in order to be competitive i would effectively be required to run a whole bunch of mods. most of them just make the game even easier, make it require less intelligence, less thinking, and that is something i really don’t like. mods that don’t have any effect on gameplay, such as just altering the appearance i’m fine with. stuff like healbot, decursive, raid alert, etc, imo it’s just like cheating.
5. totally agree. FE by far has the best implementation that I’ve personally used.
6. again, totally agree.
7. likewise for me it’s “meh”, but it’s definitely nice to see
8. agree with everything except integrated voice chat. personally i’d always rather have a third party client for voice chat because i like to talk to a lot of different people that play a lot of different games.
9. completely agree. the FE iphone app is *almost* enough to make me actually buy an apple product lol.
10. personally disagree. maybe i’m just being obstinate towards change, it certainly appears a lot of the industry is trending towards micro transactions, but i would rather pay my monthly fee and be done with it. any game i’ve tried that was supported by micro transactions i was not a fan of. I might still play DDO if it had not taken this path. While the free to play aspect is nice, being limited from so much of the game without investing a bunch is annoying. I would rather stick to the old ways and have access to the whole game.
Not a bad list at all. I don’t agree with all of it, but very well done.
Absolutely agree with those 10 points and it just goes to show how demanding we are about our new MMORPGs. I mean, some of those features are incredibly complex and time consuming to implement yet people want them as standard. No wonder the MMO genre is so hard to penetrate.
[...] ITG! has a list of demands… 10 demands, to be precise [...]
[...] Ten Things a Game Should Have from the Blog “I’m Talking Games”. [...]