Synopsis: An MMO design can be thought of as being a set of character roles that relate to one another. Each role is supported by a complete entertainment system, and the interactions of those systems establishes the way the roles relate to one another.
This article is about examining MMO system designs by considering character roles and the way that they relate to each other. The purpose of looking at system designs in that light is that it underscores the multiplayer aspect of the game genre; if players are not interacting, then the value of having the players in the same virtual environment is squandered.
The examination begins by considering a supposed role for a character. As an example, the Crafter. If you want a design to contain a role for Crafters, then you must have a complete entertainment system devoted to crafting. Crafters must be able to be using that system every moment that they are in the game. They should not be obligated to do things unrelated to crafting.
But what does related to crafting mean? Part of the challenge of design lies in finding the set of activities that someone enthusiastic about crafting wants to experience. Critically, the designer of the game is focused on ensuring that crafters have a game experience of their own. That experience is not polluted with warrior tasks or political tasks or animal husbandry tasks. It's about crafting. A player who enjoys crafting can enter the game and do nothing but the activities of crafting and be happy.
That's the key to creating a role: that there are players who enjoy doing a specific set of activities.
Now comes the second part of our examination, which is the way roles relate to each other. It's great to have a crafting role, a political role, a fighting role, a shipping role and many more roles besides, but unless they are related to one another then the multiplayer element of gameplay is not fostered.
To relate roles is again an exercise in design. No magic recipe exists that I know of to ensure that any two characters with different roles will interact. However, there are some natural ways in which character interact. There is the producer-consumer interaction. There is the cooperative interaction. There is the competitive interaction. Undoubtedly there are others, but use those three as a starting point.
Returning to the example of crafting, we'd pretty quickly look to a producer-consumer interaction. A crafter creates things that characters of other roles consume. At that point, we have to do something very important: we have to make sure that the producer wants to produce for the consumer and that the consumer wants to consume what is being produced. If bakers are making bread for warriors and warriors don't want to be bothered with the maintenance task of eating bread, then the relationship between the two roles is not a sustainable one. Players with warrior characters will attempt to minimize or eliminate that relationship every way that they possibly can.
If two roles are going to relate, we want them relating in mutually enjoyable ways. Crafters who make warrior tools are liked by the warriors. This is the case in Eve Online where the people piling all those goods into the economy in support of the corporate wars are appreciated by those fighting the corporate wars. Both sides are entertained by the interaction.
The last part of the examination is making an interaction sustainable. If a certain character role involved providing a one-time service to another character role, we don't end up with a sustainable interaction. We want an interaction that players will continue to use time and time again. Eve Online implements a marvelous structure where corporations chew through equipment in their bid to play the corporate war game, causing a constant demand for harvested goods as well as crafted goods. That is a system that has all three elements of a good role
1. An entertaining system for the role
2. Mutually-entertaining interactions with other roles
3. Sustained interactions with those roles
I should note that interactions between characters do not need to be live. Being able to drop off an item with an offline crafter so that he can repair it later may be perfectly acceptable. Selling crafted items on an automated market does not involve live interactions, but the interactions between the members of the different roles are certainly present.
If you are hoping to create a distinct role for a certain activity in your game, be sure to devote a full entertainment experience to that role. Players who enjoy that activity will spend time there, and you will have created that role in your player population. By relating their activities to other players' activities in a sustainable way, you will find that your player community will strengthen. This is true whether the interaction is designed to be cooperative, competitive or some other variation. So long as both groups enjoy the interaction, you're golden.
User Comments
Interesting article as always. However I have a qualm about limiting a player made character to just one role. Surely this will lead to a tedium where players frustrated with performing the same actions over and over again, no matter how entertaining they were to begin with, will withdraw from the title.
I'm sure this paradox is what many developers are scratching their head over. How to create unique roles/classes and play styles without making the unique roles too monotonous.
You used EVE as an example, and I think EVE also implements versatility fairly well into their system. You can have a character that is adept in various roles, but the said character can only perform one role at a time. This way, player interaction increases due to dependencies, but pleyaers are still able to switch to an other role by changing their vessel.
Hrothmund: "However I have a qualm about limiting a player made character to just one role."
As do I. The existence of roles need not mean implementing the roles as character straightjackets. I'm a big fan of the flexible character, and of using equipment to specialize a character's skill set. This article is attempting only to describe a way of ensuring that the roles are properly formed. That, instead of the partial formation that we see so often where an activity in a game exists merely as a fiction that nobody actually wants to spend any time doing.
I would be interested to see what ideas you have to apply that theory to other roles besides that of the Crafter.
Also, how does the crafting system work in EVE? Is the act of crafting itself (or the gathering of materials, or whatever) actually fun? I seem to remember mining during my 14 day trial, and it taking a while... do they employ some kind of mini game for the actual crafting?
Im a notorious soloer. But, I do wish that more MMOs were designed as player driven games that require a dependancy between roles. Fighters need crafters to supply them with gear---crafters need harvestors to supply them with materials---harvestors need crafters to supply them with gear and some times need fighters to help them harvest...
You could draw so many relationships that would provide for multiple play styles. The hard part, like you suggested, would be in providing enough depth for each area.
Melf_Himself: "I would be interested to see what ideas you have to apply that theory to other roles besides that of the Crafter."
Give me a profession and tell me how it fits into the game world.
Eve Online has Haulers who move stuff for Merchants. It also has Salvagers who extract stuff from wrecks. Harvesters of all manner of resources seems to be an MMO favorite. I might have Repairman for people who like to open stuff up and fix it (such as the stuff that the Salvagers retrieve). They would put reconditioned equipment onto the market at a discount for everyone else.
All of these systems have primitive implementations in existing games. The games are pulling at us to fill these roles, but then they don't make the roles real. If all of the roles I just listed were fleshed out in Eve Online, people would specialize into the roles that they enjoyed most and then provide that service to the player community. The specialization will only happen if the roles are fundamentally different. Harvesting should work one way. Salvaging another. Combat yet another. It makes no sense to implement all systems as: click on objects, activate automated tools and watch the fireworks. With a system like that, a player interested in one role would be as equally interested in any other role.
So the guy who blows up ships doesn't want to salvage the wrecks himself. That will take an hour or more of using systems that he really doesn't care for. Besides, he wants to go blow up some new stuff. But the salvage guy is just lurking around, hoping that somebody is going to put out a salvage contract that he can pick up. So the Combatant puts out a contract for the salvage work, charges the Salvager some money for the rights to the job and then lets the Salvager do his thing.
For those of you who play Eve Online, assume that the salvage contract could include certain items that the Combatant wanted the Salvager to keep for him - such as Tech II stuff. The rest could be gotten by the Salvager for 1 million ISK. The Combatant gets the Tech II stuff salvaged, he gets the cash from the Salvager and he gets to move on. The Salvager gets to play at being a Salvager, he gets the non Tech-II salvage and that will bring him cash.
Melf_Himself: "Is the act of crafting itself (or the gathering of materials, or whatever) actually fun? I seem to remember mining during my 14 day trial, and it taking a while... do they employ some kind of mini game for the actual crafting?"
Unfortunately, not. Crafting is actually implemented as a manufacturing operation. So Eve Online's role is more of a Businessman or Merchant rather than Artisan.
Mining in Eve Online remains a missed opportunity for CCP. Perhaps some day they'll implement a whole system to make mining a real experience. I'd really like to wrest some minerals from an asteroid field instead of simply processing the whole thing en masse.
Tatum: "Fighters need crafters to supply them with gear---crafters need harvestors to supply them with materials---harvestors need crafters to supply them with gear and some times need fighters to help them harvest..."
As a soloer, I would expect that you would see how having offline interactions between players could be valuable. To use your example, let's say a Harvester owns some land that has some valuable resource on it. Unfortunately, there is some problem on the land that the Harvester doesn't want to deal with. It's not an immediate problem, but it's something he should deal with so he can get to those resources. He hires somebody to tackle the problem. If he has goblins running around in the hills where he hopes to mine, then he'll want to contract some warriors to go clear the hills. A gold for each goblin nose that they bring back.
Fantasy MMOs call that player-granted quests. Eve Online calls it contracting. I just call it an interaction between roles.
The fact that a Harvester would hire a Warrior to kill goblins for him doesn't mean that the Harvester cannot do it himself. It's just likely that he can't do it as well as the dedicated Warrior who spends all his time using the Warrior systems (and perhaps has customized his character to be a more effective Warrior).
I started off on the note that I did because I'm leery of being a Harvester who is all set to go mining only to find that there are goblins at the one mining site that I can use. If I want to keep playing, I have to find a Warrior right now. That's not a good system.
So I want to have some choices in my Havesting so that I can issue contracts in advance of problems occurring. It's just like being a Crafter. I don't wait until I run out of resources before contracting a Harvester. That would leave me sitting on my backside waiting for the contract to come in.
I must admit I feel bad because after playing EVE Online more and more I have come to agree with JB's opinions on it. I have always said you have the gift in this area. I am happy to see you have written yet another entry. I loved this one. Very well written with good points presented.
I want to add so far from playing EVE I have one interesting observation (you probably know this). When you allow gamers to pursue what they really want to do (like be a pure crafter) you lose the narrow funnel that games like WoW have mastered.
So, in order to recreate a funnel and get gamers to socialize more you encourage them to live together in an area. This way you see each other all the time and emulate a feeling of teamwork.
That is just my opinion on playing EVE Online
Good writeup, as always.
vajuras: "So, in order to recreate a funnel and get gamers to socialize more you encourage them to live together in an area. This way you see each other all the time and emulate a feeling of teamwork."
I expect the various role-specific groups of players to remain largely independent of each other. That includes geographic isolation of the characters.
Within a given role group, I expect lots of socialization to take place. I expect each role to be implemented such that it is easy to find things to do with other members of one's group. I've referred to this as pickup raiding, but it boils down to there being several large tasks known to all the players. They can decide to tackle whichever of those tasks they care to.
Warriors know that a Lord is hiring fighters for what amounts to a PvP battle for control of some contested land (an excuse for Melf_Himself's eSports). They also know that the Lords out at the frontier are always in need of help battling the frontier monsters and tribes (PvE). Then there are the Harvesters who are invariably beset by some unpleasantness that requires a helping brute.
Crafters are similarly tasked. A Lord is building a castle or is equipping his warriors or is landscaping his property. And Crafters can have large scale projects initiated by other players as well. Houses, large equipment, and so forth. The players converge on the task and help each other out. Remember that we want each type of crafting system to have some heft to it. Crafting a house isn't going to be a case of picking a spot and dropping a chit.
These sorts of group tasks (including competitive and combative) tend to bring together players who are devoted to a certain role. This helps avoid the problem of colliding flocks by putting the Warriors in one set of places, the Crafters in another set of places and the Harvester in yet another set of places.
Some roles won't have places to call their own because their role is defined by travel - such as the Hauler.
The members of the various role groups will tend to visit each other's places, lending a certain variety to travel. Imagine if the norm in the farmlands was to be around farmers and to talk about farming. When there's a problem, the warriors are brought in and the farmers come over to watch the Warriors do their thing. In the very least, the farmers will gawk at the Warrior equipment.
Naturally, the players of Harvesters will know about the Warrior systems, they'll see YouTube Warrior videos, have friends that talk about their Warriors and may even have Warriors of their own. But seeing a Warrior in the farmlands will still lend spice to the setting.
And thanks for all the kind words.
What you wrote sounds good and will work fine.
the side effect of being able to pursue being a 'pure' crafter/trader I have noticed is this:
If 4-5 friends join the game together they may split to pursue their own interests. so you will see a crafter can do his own thing, traders doing their own thing, and so forth
this is what happened to my friends when we join eVE. I went to join a pvp corp out in 0.0. my friends started a PVE corp in empire.
I prefer the freedom to pursue my dreams like you described but I do think perhaps your idea, like mine, mght suffer from the lack of a funnel
Your solution will work great if i understand correctly for pulling n different types of players to congregate here and there. but like my ideas, we both might like a way to get different roles of friends to congregate
My idea though was do somethng like EVE, allow everyone to sort of buld a city togehter. this way you have warriors fughting, crafters dong their thing, and everyone is centralized at same location
I hate how my friends and I are decentralized.
I hope i explained the issue. I suppose EVE does offer a solution. I could insist they join our 0.0 corp.
How would you go about solvng the "lack of funnel" issue for a group of friends?
Good ideas this sounds like a game i would enjoy playing. Also, maybe one day you could write a blog how you mght go bout improving EVE. I was not open to those ideas previously but i think every game could use improvement it would be cool to just branstorm on that for future space titles.
k, sorry for the book
Sorry for low caps and misspellngs lights are odd around here right now dont ask lol
vajuras: "How would you go about solvng the "lack of funnel" issue for a group of friends?"
It depends on how tight a funnel you want. If you want to be interacting with your friends on a constant basis, then it requires something like standard MMO combat. There, characters fill slightly different roles to accomplish a task in real time. The funnel is so narrow that friends are assured of constant interaction, but only for a very narrowly-defined activity. That can leave players dissatisfied.
If the funnel is widened, then we can expand on the range of roles. That lets each player do more of what they want, but it produces less interaction between friends. The most extreme form of this - the widest funnel - is when the different roles are isolated from one another, doing their own thing, and just tossing goods and services over the wall to each other. Friends who pursue different roles would only vaguely interact.
In general, multidisciplinary tasks could be created to bring together different character roles. So long as those roles are naturally associated with the task, it should attract members of each role.
I would focus on large group tasks that permit many people to join in. Regardless of the composition of the group of friends, they can still simply join in - as can solo characters of each role.
Naturally, there would be cases where a group of friends brings N roles to an activity where only N-1 roles are truly applicable. The friends who play the Nth role can either join in on one of the applicable roles or wander off to pursue their own role.
Ah that is an excellent response yes I agree
I don't agree. Why would you first create fun roles that interact with each other and then completely seperate them for the most of the time? When two roles interact with each other, then they should be doing so all the time. If i play a mage and my friend plays a warrior, i want him to defend me while i nuke the mobs, i want him to make a sword so that i can enchant it, he is the strong guy and i am the smart guy and we work together. I want to experience all parts of the game, unaffected by the role i choose. I can't understand why you would put crafters with crafters, fighters with fighters, politicians with politicians, traders with traders, because, IMO, it would be ... boring.
Drolletje: "Why would you first create fun roles that interact with each other and then completely seperate them for the most of the time?"
There's no requirement to completely separate characters operating in various roles. However, there is a certain amount of isolation implicit in a role, otherwise it is not a unique role.
Drolletje: "If i play a mage and my friend plays a warrior, i want him to defend me while i nuke the mobs"
Case in point, you're both filling the same role of Monster Killer. A role is supported by a system that is intended to entertain players who are enthusiasts of that system. The systems are supposed to be different. If they're not, then they will attract the same groups of players, automatically making the two systems into one.
To continue with Mage and Warrior, in my own magic system, magic does not do damage. It messes with the conditions that impact other systems. That's why the system will be used by a different type of player than would pick up a sword to hack away at monsters. That's why those who enjoy that magic system would be making their behavior into a unique role in the game world.
Drolletje: "I want to experience all parts of the game, unaffected by the role i choose."
As do I, but roles are not classes. What you do with your time determines your de facto role, not the other way around. The game doesn't store your 'role' anywhere. It is a conceptual thing. But it's a very concrete issue when creating the various systems because there's one for making swords that is different from the one for making armor that is different from magic that is different from training horses and so on.
My attitude about gaming is that players should do things because they enjoy doing them, not because they want something out of the activity. If you want a sword, go find somebody who makes them well. Yes, you can make your own, but you'll have to learn the system devoted to sword making. It might involve solving lots of puzzles, or waiting patiently for colors to change. Whatever it is, it is intended to appeal to people who would enjoy making swords, not those who would like to have swords.
Existing games structure all systems to entertain people who would like to be level 70 with the best gear in the game as soon as possible. That's one role. That's a Leveler. I wouldn't implement that system in my game.
Drolletje: "I can't understand why you would put crafters with crafters, fighters with fighters, politicians with politicians, traders with traders, because, IMO, it would be ... boring."
The only group that gains by having all the different groups mixed together are PvP enthusiasts who require non-combatants to prey on. Other than that, the crafters tend to stay in towns, the politicians at court, the traders in the marketplace and the fighters in the combat zones.
"The only group that gains by having all the different groups mixed together are PvP enthusiasts who require non-combatants to prey on. Other than that, the crafters tend to stay in towns, the politicians at court, the traders in the marketplace and the fighters in the combat zones."
Well it depends on the game. If its a Nation vs Nation game or what have you, all players that belong to a Nation works together as a team. This is what EVE's Alliances are. They have meetings and handle politics (make treaties and so forth).
Right now, this might only exist on this player in games. But it could be adapted to PVE focused titles or for PVE content
Sorry to come back to this late.
A thought on segregating particular roles is that people will want to perform different roles at different times. Even people who enjoy crafting are probably going to want to go combat stuff from time to time and vice versa...
So you can't segregate people too much, or it will make them hard to switch.
It would be awesome to see fun systems implemented for all the different aspects of MMO play as you say. I'd love to see a write-up of a possible crafting system if you've got one brewing ^^
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