Synopsis: Instead of placing a grind in between the player and every little thing that can be experienced in an MMO, a vast array of activities should be immediately available. Beyond that, there should be a large set of exceptional rewards that players can pursue through achievement grinds of one form or another.
In MMOs, content gating is the practice of making new content accessible to players once they have completed certain tasks. Reach level five and your character can survive in a new area of the world. Gain appropriate faction with a certain group and your character can use the services of that group. Complete a quest and your character can get the next step in the quest chain.
Content gating is a reasonable practice, but it has been applied far too extensively to MMOs. There are certain basic activities that a character should be able to engage in without having to open a content gate, especially by achievement. Perhaps foremost among these is the ability to travel the world.
There is a long tradition in gaming that a player completes levels in order. That tradition is as old as computer gaming, stretching back to the days of Pac Man and Missile Command. It has continued into MMOs and it is ill-used there. Travel in a virtual setting should be accepted as a given. A day one character should be able to be moved about the world without concern over whether it has the proper achievements.
That doesn't mean that a day one character should be able to walk up to a dragon and kill it. It also doesn't mean that the character should be able to walk right up to the king's palace and into his private chambers to search for the crown jewels. It does mean that all the normal conventions of travel should be in place. A character should be able to go over and see the dragon from a distance. A character should be able to walk over to the king's palace. If the character approaches the dragon, it will get eaten. If it approaches the king's palace, it will be denied entrance by guards. That's when players have to begin to pursue achievements. If they want to enter the king's palace, they're going to have to develop their faction with somebody so that they can at least get in the front gates. It would certainly take a significant achievement to meet the king.
But note that this is a recipe where a player is able to do many things in the game without first accomplishing anything. It is only the more extraordinary or unusual activities that require achievements. Said another way, only the exceptional reward should require exceptional effort.
Riding a horse or walking through a certain forest is not an exceptional reward. Entering the king's palace grounds is. Being able to buy goods is not an exceptional reward. Looking through a merchant's private stock is. Being able to use a forge or a craftsman's table is not an exceptional reward. Learning a guild's most-prized formula is. The mundane requires the mundane, while the exceptional requires the exceptional. It's important for MMO developers to know which is which.
Tackling this sort of thing would mean that a game's entertainment cannot be derived from making players work for the trivial. It would mean that a publisher would have to include a broad swath of content that players would immediately have access to. On day one, a player can take their character with their starting funds, buy an old horse and start riding off into the countryside without worrying about whether or not he had killed 10 rats to make the town guards happy enough to let him out the front gates.
Realize that this would mean the end of levels as we have them today. Being able to walk through any part of the world is a mundane activity. So it's no longer necessary to kill monsters for a week before entering a certain part of the game world. If you want to go there, you go there. It might be dangerous, but it would be like being a level 40 character facing level 30 to 50 monsters everywhere you go. Sometimes you run, sometimes you don't. Take some friends with you and you don't run very often.
Achievements remain in the game, of course. All the usual things that you do today in a game can still be there, but they are reserved for more exceptional situations with exceptional rewards. Just pick anything that your character would do and improve it a bit. That's an exceptional reward.
Perhaps you jump through hoops to be able to commission a sword from a famed NPC swordsmith. The sword is good, but the achievements are things that only a real sword enthusiast would bother doing. You can get a perfectly good sword without doing all that stuff, but the swordsmith's weapon will give your character extra speed and damage.
That same technique can be applied to clothes, horses, food, magic, etc. Normal gear runs around 50-80% effectiveness, but can go as high as 100%. The exceptional stuff has an extra kick to it, moving up to 110% or so. Plus, there would be visible elements to it that would demonstrate that the owner had gone the extra mile. The staff is intricately carved. The sword has a jeweled pommel. The horse has a longer mane, etc. To the discriminating eye, much can be discovered.
There's also the exceptional rewards of things that appeal to aficionados of a certain type of experience. Hunting on a lord's private reserve, where there is known to be an animal that is particularly difficult to track. A tracker's delight. For trackers that don't care for the whole achievement thing, they just stick with tracking the animals that are running wild. For those who like to have something to work for, they can jump through the hoops that let them hunt on the lord's private reserve.
There are the exceptional rewards of group challenges. There might be a monster lair that has a bag of valuables in among their prized possessions. No single character can enter the lair and grab the valuables (no, not even the 80 million rogues running around trying to sneak up on everything of value). So it takes a group effort, and it won't be easy even then. Remember that all of you are level 40 and all the monsters are more or less at your level. You'll have to do some serious thinking and/or fighting to get in and out.
This pattern continues, and I don't need to keep going with examples. Instead of using the content gating technique everywhere in an MMO, it should be used selectively, to produce challenges for those who are interested in certain rewards. Those rewards cannot be overpowering relative to the remainder of the game, else every player will be required to obtain them. When that happens, they become mundane rewards, and content gating returns to the mainstream experience of the game. So the rewards are kept only slightly better than mundane, the challenges are made entertaining for those pursuing the rewards, and the rewards themselves are more of a badge of honor than a means of leaving the crowd behind.
User Comments
I've wished for a long time that developers would step up and stop leaning on content gating.
I think the problem is two-fold:
1. It's easier for developers to design games with content gaming in mind. Designing a game with the mechanics that you design would be much harder and more time consuming than designing a game based on the contemporary train of thought that's given us such a lackluster gaming experience.
2. Too many people have grown this incessant desire to be "better" or more unique than every other player in the game. My only complaint in that regard is when every person of class X at level Y will have armor Z equipped. That just takes lazy development one step further than content gating.
It's fun to imagine a really good game like you've described or hinted at, but I don't think we'll see that kind of gaming any time soon if ever.
This idea would really require an alternate form of character progression, which I'm definately in favor of. Zero progression, flat progression, lateral progression...any of them would be interesting.
The whole theory fits with what you're describing: allow ALL new characters to join the game. No, they don't have access to everything or exactly as much power as a much more experienced character, but they have plenty to start with.
Basically, you're closing the gap between new and experienced characters. The biggest rewards and acheivments still take time/skill/effort, but everything else is accessible from day one.
Yeah I guess they keep trying to target what 300 hours to stretch out progression? So they take the 20 or so powers a player normally gets and spread it out. Since I play single player RPGs and other genres I keep having this problem with mmorpgs- why do I need to grind so much for the mundane? Why do I have to be so poor and 3rd world broke when I start out? Was playing Lost Odessesy (single player RPG) and noticed my avatar is Level 10 at the begining. I pondered why the devs thought to assign me this number. I dont know yet but it feels good to start out with fancy looking armor and not suck at the begining.
"This pattern continues, and I don't need to keep going with examples. Instead of using the content gating technique everywhere in an MMO, it should be used selectively, to produce challenges for those who are interested in certain rewards. Those rewards cannot be overpowering relative to the remainder of the game, else every player will be required to obtain them. When that happens, they become mundane rewards, and content gating returns to the mainstream experience of the game. So the rewards are kept only slightly better than mundane, the challenges are made entertaining for those pursuing the rewards, and the rewards themselves are more of a badge of honor than a means of leaving the crowd behind."
If you really want to be make it so us casuals are not forced to jump through hoops to be onpar then the mathematical efficiency will need to be the same actually. Only Guild Wars has done this where a player's skill outweighs gear and items. The more expensive items only look better they dont offer increased performance and seriously people still grind for those nice looking items so they look cool. I know I did the extra icing for my cape in City of Heroes. Now, lets say the uber items are only 10% more efficient (like in CoX games). Players will still feel pressured to acquire them
This is why I like games where players can make items that way I avoid being "pressured" to get the best items. I hope one day we will see MMOs treat us casual gamers more kind
Bah I think I got carried away a bit here. You're not giving a game design doc. for all I know for PVP you would give players all the best items. For all I know, it would be super fun to group to takedown a dragon and get the slightly better stuff.
I'm kinda burnt out on the genre so I sort of knee jerked a tiny bit there
Kryogenic: "It's easier for developers to design games with content gating in mind."
The industry is well-practiced at it, so it certainly makes sense that it would become easier to do over time.
Kryogenic: "Too many people have grown this incessant desire to be "better" or more unique than every other player in the game."
I agree. I believe that's simply due to the fact that the industry calls to such people. The games are designed to reward them. From what I've seen, it is a reflection of the developers themselves. But there too, it may be a chicken-and-egg problem. Did the developers choose the industry or did the industry choose the developers?
Either way, I remain hopeful that we'll see games that don't call to those who enjoy one-upping the next guy.
By the way, you write very well.
Tatum: "Basically, you're closing the gap between new and experienced characters."
Yep. This is really the "no levels" argument all over again, but applied to the more general principle of content gating. The only proper use of content gating is to stratify and isolate characters. When you want isolation, content gating is a good way to go. I'd argue that isolation should be as temporary as possible. Thus my hunting example; a character goes on a hunt because he has opened a content gate (favor with an NPC), but returns to the masses after the hunt. That, in contrast with the one-way gate of gaining levels in most games. Once you go up, you never come back.
"Remember me when you're rich and famous!"
vajuras: "Yeah I guess they keep trying to target what 300 hours to stretch out progression?"
As I was commenting to Kryogenic, the industry seems to be set up to think that way about gaming; hours of progression. For some screwy reason, the presence of 1,000 people in the same virtual space hasn't inspired anyone to come up with anything better than 5 of them hitting lots of small monsters or 10 or 20 of them hitting some large monsters.
This is the source of my articles suggesting that designers could learn lessons from Chess and Cards. There are other ways for players to interact. Ultima Online demonstrated a lot of that, even though the designers there made some fundamental mistakes.
I'm not arguing for sandboxes. I don't believe in them because they demand too much time from players. I believe in sessions under 2 hours that let a player step away from the game feeling like they really had some fun. Not because they spent another 2 hours managing their virtual pawn shop or killing another 50 orcs on the way to having a full set of orc eyeballs, but because they were interacting with other players over content that was inherently enjoyable. Lose the majority of the content gates and players will be able to interact and continue to interact. Then we might start having some serious fun.
vajuras: "Players will still feel pressured to acquire them"
If there's nothing else to do but collect equipment, then I can see why that would hold true. It's a content gate. Players are trained to find them and go through them. It will take a number of well-designed games that aren't predicated on content gating before people will catch onto the idea of being entertained by something else.
No, Second Life is the one pure sandbox and its very casual. Sure, Ryzom, EVE, UO, and others are also a form of a sandbox but this belief that sandboxes are a grind isn't applicable globally.
Sandboxes, in their purest form, have no grind whatsoever.. Thats the whole point (see Half life 2 gary's mod or Halo 3 Forge mode to make this clearer)
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