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I came to the conclusion long ago that the only effective way to have effective non-grinding gameplay in an MMORPG is to base the game around competition betwee

I came to the conclusion long ago that the only effective way to have effective non-grinding gameplay in an MMORPG is to base the game around competition between players. It is infeasible from a monetary perspective (development costs) and a practical standpoint to have interesting, custom-built content to fill years of gameplay. What can break this barrier is interactions between actual people, which are far more interesting and variable than anything a developer can put together himself. The purpose of the game world should be to facilitate competition between players as best as possible. Finally, a game should also be based around an activity that is inherently enjoyable without the existence of progression. For example, Team Fortress 2 is a lot of fun to play even though you're not "leveling up" or getting "epic equipment". World of Warcraft, by comparison, wouldn't addict anyone if there were no levels or equipment. I can recall many games that have done either (or both) of these to some extent and were far more fun and interesting than any WoW clone: 1. Planetside. Not merely an MMOG first-person shooter, but one in which the primary content of the game consists of player combat. Shooting people in multiplayer games is fun, and doing it for territorial control with your friends in a persistent world is even moreso. Global Agenda looks like it might be bringing this concept back in 2010. 2. Shattered Galaxy. One of those games that got great review scores in every magazine and then disappeared off the map. A somewhat flawed but still very fun MMORTS, it was a blast to play even ignoring the progression aspect, and consisted entirely of player-vs-player team tactical combat with territorial control aspects. Incredibly addictive despite the pretty minimal progression system. 3. EVE Online. Failed miserably at the "base itself around fun activities" moniker, but based itself almost entirely around player-vs-player combat, empire-building, and market-based competition. To this day, it has set a bar for epic-scale player competition that no other game has gotten near. Basically all of the game's content was entirely player-generated: wars between player-run alliances over player-built space stations using player-built spaceships constructed using player-mined minerals. In short, make it fun, and make it about competition between people, not between people and Orc NPCs.

amichail 17y ago
What's interesting here though is that grinding seems to be a great way to build a successful (MMO)RPG. This is counterintuitive.
- DarkShikari 17y ago
  I don't think it's counterintuitive. Which is easier: making a slot machine that will keep someone gambling for 30 minutes or making an interesting game that will keep someone playing for 30 minutes?
  - wmf 17y ago
    I would guess that people who play slots don't find them boring. The contradiction seems to be that grinding could be both boring and addictive at the same time.
PieSquared 17y ago
>It is infeasible from a monetary perspective (development costs) and a practical standpoint to have interesting, custom-built content to fill years of gameplay. Huh. Autogenerated MMORPG content seems... remotely plausible. Or at least, some of it could be autogenerated. The terrain, at least, and names. Maybe some of the quests. I haven't seen anyone trying this though, I guess it's hard to make autogenerated content pleasant.
- DarkShikari 17y ago
  EVE Online did autogenerated content for most of the base universe: the devs even noted that the random seed they used for the universe was "42". Of course, quests and such were hand-crafted later, this was just for the names, star systems, connections between them, NPC-controlled space stations, planets, moons, asteroid belts, resources, etc. The real problem IMO is that autogenerated content can't be any more inherently interesting than the algorithm that created it. In EVE, this wasn't a problem, because the autogenerated content was merely intended as a "playing field" on which other events happened, but if the autogenerated content is the content itself, I think you'll have serious problems making it non-repetitive.
- alex_c 17y ago
  The compelling part of a RPG is the process of discovery - discovering the world, the story, monsters, powers, etc. If the content is hand-crafted, there's always something new around the corner, which keeps the game fresh. The problem with autogenerated content is that the process of discovery changes to discovering the algorithms used to generate the content. Once the player has discovered those algorithms, it's impossible to continue having a fresh experience. So "autogenerated" is, at best, taking hand-crafted content, repeating it a few times, and changing some details in the hope that the player won't notice the repetition right away. This is, of course, only in the context of traditional RPGs - more sandbox-style games, like Dwarf Fortress, or Love (or, hell, at the other extreme of auto-generated content, Tetris) can do just fine.
  - warfangle 17y ago
    One of the problems with auto-generated content is that the setting is typically extremely static. If you could build a properly robust dynamic environment, the auto-generated content would depend hugely on how players actually interact with the (dynamic) gameworld. I'm sure some would figure out the algorithms involved in such a game, but if you add enough fuzzy logic in, it could potentially keep the wool over most of the players' eyes..
Tichy 17y ago
I think in theory interesting automated content should be possible to achieve, for example by simulating a "real" world. Most MMORPGs I have seen so far don't seem to simulate much at all (some prices for goods at the most). The counterargument is probably that it is too difficult to emulate the entities in a MMORPG well enough to make it interesting. To which I reply: Conway's game of life is interesting, and it is just a very simple cellular emulator. One of the game ideas I have considered: imagine the players have landed on a huge alien planet, and somehow must figure out how to survive. To survive, they have to cooperate with the alien life forms, for example figure out how to farm them, prevent their extinction, mutate them to become nice herd animals, and so on. So the life forms wouldn't have to display human intelligence - they could be plants and animals, and perhaps it could still be interesting. Besides, players should be allowed to program robots to work for them. Maybe they would have to struggle with environmental hazards and what not. Personally I think I would be interested in such a game, probably seeing it more as a platform for research and experimentation than a mere game. But I grant that it might never get a following remotely as big as WoW :-)

amichail 17y ago

What's interesting here though is that grinding seems to be a great way to build a successful (MMO)RPG. This is counterintuitive.

DarkShikari 17y ago
I don't think it's counterintuitive. Which is easier: making a slot machine that will keep someone gambling for 30 minutes or making an interesting game that will keep someone playing for 30 minutes?
- wmf 17y ago
  I would guess that people who play slots don't find them boring. The contradiction seems to be that grinding could be both boring and addictive at the same time.

PieSquared 17y ago

>It is infeasible from a monetary perspective (development costs) and a practical standpoint to have interesting, custom-built content to fill years of gameplay. Huh. Autogenerated MMORPG content seems... remotely plausible. Or at least, some of it could be autogenerated. The terrain, at least, and names. Maybe some of the quests. I haven't seen anyone trying this though, I guess it's hard to make autogenerated content pleasant.

DarkShikari 17y ago
EVE Online did autogenerated content for most of the base universe: the devs even noted that the random seed they used for the universe was "42". Of course, quests and such were hand-crafted later, this was just for the names, star systems, connections between them, NPC-controlled space stations, planets, moons, asteroid belts, resources, etc. The real problem IMO is that autogenerated content can't be any more inherently interesting than the algorithm that created it. In EVE, this wasn't a problem, because the autogenerated content was merely intended as a "playing field" on which other events happened, but if the autogenerated content is the content itself, I think you'll have serious problems making it non-repetitive.
alex_c 17y ago
The compelling part of a RPG is the process of discovery - discovering the world, the story, monsters, powers, etc. If the content is hand-crafted, there's always something new around the corner, which keeps the game fresh. The problem with autogenerated content is that the process of discovery changes to discovering the algorithms used to generate the content. Once the player has discovered those algorithms, it's impossible to continue having a fresh experience. So "autogenerated" is, at best, taking hand-crafted content, repeating it a few times, and changing some details in the hope that the player won't notice the repetition right away. This is, of course, only in the context of traditional RPGs - more sandbox-style games, like Dwarf Fortress, or Love (or, hell, at the other extreme of auto-generated content, Tetris) can do just fine.
- warfangle 17y ago
  One of the problems with auto-generated content is that the setting is typically extremely static. If you could build a properly robust dynamic environment, the auto-generated content would depend hugely on how players actually interact with the (dynamic) gameworld. I'm sure some would figure out the algorithms involved in such a game, but if you add enough fuzzy logic in, it could potentially keep the wool over most of the players' eyes..

Tichy 17y ago

I think in theory interesting automated content should be possible to achieve, for example by simulating a "real" world. Most MMORPGs I have seen so far don't seem to simulate much at all (some prices for goods at the most). The counterargument is probably that it is too difficult to emulate the entities in a MMORPG well enough to make it interesting. To which I reply: Conway's game of life is interesting, and it is just a very simple cellular emulator. One of the game ideas I have considered: imagine the players have landed on a huge alien planet, and somehow must figure out how to survive. To survive, they have to cooperate with the alien life forms, for example figure out how to farm them, prevent their extinction, mutate them to become nice herd animals, and so on. So the life forms wouldn't have to display human intelligence - they could be plants and animals, and perhaps it could still be interesting. Besides, players should be allowed to program robots to work for them. Maybe they would have to struggle with environmental hazards and what not. Personally I think I would be interested in such a game, probably seeing it more as a platform for research and experimentation than a mere game. But I grant that it might never get a following remotely as big as WoW :-)