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Hello o.0
I see alot of posts (Haha checked only back 2 pages, too lazy to go further), some of them announce new PWs. Yet we all know that most of these will fail, heck almost every single one will fail, and it'll take alot of coal till a diamond is finally squeezed out.
But I am probably rambling so I'll get right to the point. Having attempted to make a Playerworld myself, I know how hard it is and how much work it is. Moreover I now know even more through expirince in other MMORPGs. So I was just wondering wether any playerworld out there can REALLY step up and say that they'll have their players interested not for days nor weeks, but months and years. Sure I'll get alot of owners boasting about their systems, geniuos level designes and what not, but that's all that is boasting. Fancy graphics, great level design, these are just tools, not the game itself. Of course a game can be made even out of exploration, but for how long will you be able to occupie the players with the single idea of exploring?
I believe there are a few essential things that bring success to any Playerworld.
1. Quality "Jobs", and I don't mean "Oh we have 123681723 jobs, but what it all really boils down to is pressing D, or findign and item and THEN pressing D". I mean you can go so far with these job systems! Heck look at most MMORPGs that even have this sort of thing. My main inspiration at the time being WoW, and it's enchanting system. All the others I really find boring and tediuos (Find a resource, get it, repeat till you ahve enough), but enchanting, it doesn't take away from your gameplay. Essentially you can take an item, break it up into a couple of magic elements, and then combine thsoe elements to improove your items. The more you do this, the betetr you get at it. Main problem being finding of these rare items.
Now I am not saying this is perfect, far from it, partially this was created in order to create an item sink (smart on blizzards side). But the idea is neat within itself. You don't actually work for the work... it happens naturally. You just walka round, kill a few things, and there is your resource.
Similarly long ago I devised an Alchemy system, that would allow players to create almost any item in game, they simply had to know the proper combination of elements. There was no long resource gathering procedures, as almost every element could be obtained from surroundings or from other items. The recepies were never recored on character, so there were no restriction to what a person might do. The catch was that players had to spend a few minutres in the library now and then, reading ancient books and resolving clues to find better recepies, or they could experiment, eitehr way.
Point being, be creative. I mean you can name a D Bashing job anything you want to name it, but it'll still be a D Bashing job...
2. Quality "World" - Alot of worlds that you see are fairly empty spaces. Look at Graal 2001 as an example, alot of it is just wasted on trees. World size doesn't matter, it's much better to make 20 levels that are rich and swallen with content than to make 2500 that are grass and trees.
Another part of world is it's immersiveness, you can either have a player run around, because he wants to get that sword for his character, or you can have player running around because he wants to get a sword for himself. Difference you might ask? People play to escape reality, to relax, the more immersive the gameplay, the better that task is accomplished, the better players feel, the more they come back.
Immersiveness can be achieved through history, story line (Although I do not believe in the latter, there just can't be 100 guys rnning around who are doing exactly same thing over and over, I mean someone should just stop after savin the world and say to another: "Don't worry I already saved the princess and slayed the dragon"), recurring NPCs (Again this is element of history, you might have seen a thief in the bar, than later that their becomes a barman in that very same bar). Also don't forget world evolution. Sadly it's pretty hard to keep the world evolving at a good pace, in fact players WILL catch up to you fairly quickly. That's why your Staff team should be a large well organized institution, but that'll never happen x.x
3. Punishment, honestly many people left Graal Kingdoms because of it's punishment system (Not sure wether it's still around), but essentially they killed hundreds of monsters, just to be caught by some bug and die. There goes your expirience. Annoying. Again look to other's for answers. Even withing Graal, remember how fun it was to PK? Remember why? Because you were not afarid to die, you die, so what? Just respawn and back into combat you go. Sure the game looses it's realism, but do you know the real reason behind punishment system? To prolong game playability, to make the content last longer.
4. Give players choices. Bottom line is humans like to choose, we pick our cereal in the morning, we pick our dream jobs, we pick our noses, all of thsoe are choices, and we are used to making them. I really hate following a straight line of quests in games, I really hate when I am not given option to what I should do. If you are able to harness this idea, and provide players with options and choices as to their path, you'll have a successful world.
5. Innovation is really what seems to pull people. I mean look at Era, as soon as it poped up, the numbers of players on it soared every day. No it wasn't because of GTA feel on era, it was due to innovation. If you mke something tat's even remotley original, people will come, just to check it out, to explore the new world.
At this point I really have nothing more to say, and I am not sure wether I amde any sense at all thus far. I hope I did. In any case, if you have any suggestions towards this list feel free to post them. |
12-28-2004, 09:01 PM
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