In which I throw Leveling and Skill systems under the bus...

All RPGs, by nature, are character driven stories – where YOU are the central character (or team of characters). As the story unfolds, your character evolves. At a minimum, this is the addition of new equipment and inventory to aid you in your adventure. And typically, it also includes some other type character advancement – usually in the form of new levels, skills or attributes like health.

MMORPG are no different in this respect. The character is the defining trait of a Role Playing Game. The core of a game lies not in it’s virtual world, but in the character each player controls.

Levels and Skills
The underlying mechanics between Levels and Skills is similar in that they both advance vertically with progression, but skills are very specific while Levels are broad and affect a large number of things. Skills are effectively mini-levels for a specific character trait.

As such, they both share some common disadvantages:

• There is a vertical limit or ‘max cap’ on how far you can advance with this type of progression
• Players can view gaining skills or levels as an obstacle (not fun)
• Separate from, but often prerequisite to, the end-game
• Fairness issues related to lowering or raising the cap
• The further you progress, the more obsolete and irrelevant the early content becomes

Now consider that any MMO that uses this system introduces it to new players as the very first task for them to accomplish. And then the game proceeds to limit just about every possible thing they can do from a character progression standpoint with this system. You want to do what? You need to gain X level or skill before you can do it.

With game design like that, it’s really no wonder that people a) try to grind through it quickly and b) don’t know what the hell do to when they reach the cap. Ultimately, it’s about expectations and from a very early start, these games teach players that THE most important thing is acquiring these levels or skills.

Toss them out
At a fundamental level, what do you want your MMO to be about? Do you want it to be about power-leveling your character attributes? Or do you want it to be about the gameplay? Because whatever the end-game is intended to be in your game, the leveling and skills system is simply an obstacle to getting to that part of the game.

But what if the leveling part is the part you enjoy most? I would argue that it's not 'levels' that you play for, but the linear progression provided by those levels. It’s a very clear mark of progression. Which is to say, it’s not much different than reaching a checkpoint or savepoint in Halo or some other FPS.

It’s a marker of achievement and an obvious step forward. That’s the part you are playing for and I’m not trying to take that away from you.

What I’m suggesting is that we replace that linear progression with other things. Things you can still work towards achieving, but things that are more consistent with the end-game design of your game. The progression should complement or be part of that progression, not separate.

The importance of ‘Heroic Deeds’ and ‘Epic Moments’
Personally, I would rather my character-based progression be based on the deeds or things that happened to that character than on some numeric blip that increased every time I attacked a monster. When I think of my favorite moments in Warcraft, I don’t think about that time I dinged 80 but specific raid encounters and specific quest lines.

I’m talking about my achievements and the ‘story’ as I experienced it. Even when I think about PvP, I’m thinking of those ‘Epic Moments’ when crazy stuff happened or I solo killed multiple players.

Quest arcs, Impact PvP, Raid Encounters, and yes, even Achievement based milestones, are a better measure of progress than simply leveling.

Consider that one of the drawbacks to skills and levels is that specific content needs to be designed for players at various stages. This means that in WoW, for example, all the content developed for level 10-15 characters is obsolete even by level 20. From a resource management standpoint, that’s a lot of unused content for a stage that lasts 15 hours of play time in a game which even casual players log a thousand hours.

What if that development time had instead been used to develop better quality content for Heroic Deeds and Epic Moments? Content that was actually useful to players even after that 1000th hour?

The importance of ‘Things’
For me, the most powerful and interesting part of character progression is in the acquisition of things. In Lord of the Rings, what made Frodo unique and interesting? The one ring. A ‘Thing’ that he possessed.

Don’t underestimate how powerful both acquiring and losing ‘Things’ is to players. The whole reason that Impact PvP is viewed so negatively is because of the consequences that come from losing your ‘Things’. And what about when that ‘Thing’ drops off that boss?

There are countless progression opportunities related to ‘Things’. You can get stuff, lose stuff, replace stuff, make stuff, trade stuff, steal stuff, have your stuff break, need some stuff in order to use other stuff, have really powerful stuff and even (gasp!) lose stuff when you die.

It’s also possible to have linear progression with ‘Things’ as well. For example, perhaps you need ‘Thing X’ in order to do Z and gain ‘Thing Y’. But ‘Thing X’ isn’t easy to get and requires the completion of a Heroic Deed. Nor can you give ‘Thing X’ to another player and circumvent the need to do the Heroic Deed.

In fact, if ‘Thing X’ were important enough, then it could become the bottleneck that requires all players to progress through that Heroic Deed. Not to mention all the progression that could be related to player housing, keeps and territory control.

All of this can be done with a skill or level system as well, but the point here is that the player’s attention is directed to this style of progression from the start rather than viewing these things as an obstacle to power-leveling.

It’s a form of progression that works in harmony with your end-game and is very scalable (just add more ‘Things’ and Heroic Deeds).

Yes, it’s just a more complicated way of handling player progression. Added complexity isn’t always bad — it can add significant depth to a game. Depth that is really helpful in holding a player’s attention for YEARS.

Also, none of this is to say that specializations (talent trees) don’t exist. Or even classes for that matter. I’m just talking about removing the stat based leveling system as a method of progression.

In which I attempt to defend Griefing...

According to a recent post by Tobold, griefing players in an MMO is evil. Albeit, not as evil as say murdering or robbing someone in real life, but evil nonetheless. Strictly speaking, he’s right.

Evil, by definition, is doing that which is morally objectionable. Moral, in this sense, being the standard of what is right and wrong as it conforms to the rest of society. The norms of society are really important to this definition because each individual person has their own perception of morality. It’s only within the context of society that we can judge that which is immoral or evil.

MMOs are interesting in that the social dynamics of the community certainly provide a society for that MMO. And as with all societies, acceptable behavior is defined by the norms of the people in that society.

In this way, there are very clear definitions of what is right and wrong behavior in any MMO. These norms may not be the same in each game, or even a reflection of the broader real world society, but they do exist within the confines of that game.

Men Behaving Badly
In real life, we view things like drug use, lewd or rude behavior, and even sexual promiscuity as immoral acts. And yet, it’s not uncommon for men to revel in a politically incorrect world of booze, burps and boobs.

Morally objectionable? Yes. Fun? Hell, yes!

Therein lies the problem. It may not be proper, it may not even be accepted. But dammit, it’s fun.

We even have a term for the idea that the pursuit of pleasure is the actual (and proper) motive of every action: Hedonism. And if someone is too prudish or too morally upright, we say they have a ‘stick up their ass’.

And our dirty little secret? Everyone has some guilty pleasure they KNOW is questionable but love to do.

The Humor in Griefing
OK. So one of my dark little secrets is that I can see the humor in griefing. I don’t think it’s appropriate, I don’t think people should do it, and I most certainly absolutely hate it when it’s done to me. And yes, if people get griefed, I am very much inclined to blame and hold the developer responsible for allowing it to happen.

And yet, it can be funny. It can be entertaining. And yes, I’ve even done it.

The Bank Hiests in Darkfall is perhaps the worst griefing story I have every read. The author of that link describes in great detail his exploits in robbing and destroying several guilds.  It is appalling. It is unacceptable. I feel horrible for the people involved. And yet, I couldn’t help but laugh and marvel at his accomplishments.

Sometimes when the dark parts of our soul get exposed it’s humorous. Many comedians, films, authors have been incredibly successful because of the dark nature of their humor. Perhaps one of the most memorable scenes in Pulp Fiction is the car scene where Marvin gets shot in the head. Taken out of context, it’s horrible and awful. But oh man did it make me laugh when I first saw it.

In fact, to really understand what makes Griefers tick, you really should visit Something Awful, the birthplace of the most famous MMO griefers – The Goons. This is a website dedicated to all the awful things that make us laugh.

Different Strokes for Different Folks
As Tobold also pointed out, when actions are consensual, it’s not really griefing. From this perspective, it’s important to realize that the society morals of a game like Darkfall (with corpse looting) may be much different than a game like World of Warcraft.

Each MMO really is an individual community with it’s own social norms. Certain behavior that is unacceptable in one game may be perfectly acceptable in another game. Even in WoW, social conventions can be different between two servers. If you have ever gone from a PvE to a PvP server (or vice versa), then you likely have some idea what I’m talking about.

Griefing is Evil
But, at the end of the day, despite the potential humor -- Griefing is just not that fun for the guy getting Griefed. It just plain sucks to get Griefed and have your day ruined because some asshat thought it was funny.

Which is ultimately why I will fail in this attempt to defend Griefing.

Because, in the end, Griefing is not something you can defend. It is horrible. It is awful. And funny or not, it isn't something we should condone or support in our games.

Creativity vs. Scope

Scott Jennings has new article up at MMORPG in which he writes about the common failures in MMOs. It’s actually part two of a two-part article – the first part being about the biggest MMO failures. In the article, he calls out four critical success factors for developing a new MMO:

• Scope
• Technology
• Service
• Design

For Scott, the biggest culprit appears to be scope. And with good reason. Scope is the definition of what a project is and everything it will include. In truth, the other three success factors he names (technology, service, design) are all included in the overall scope of a project.

As Scott points out, most scoping problems are either related to having unrealistic project goals or deviations from your scope (called scope creep). Realistic goal setting is really a function of experience, so ideally whoever is creating a project plan has the subject matter expertise to lay out achievable milestones.

In my experience as a project manager, scope creep has always been the bigger danger. Over the course of any long project, the scope of that project is likely to change or evolve.

When this happens, it’s important to clarify your scope and ensure your milestones are still achievable. You can’t be so inflexible as to never change your scope – but you also have to be cognizant that if you DO change your scope, it’s going to impact other areas.

Creativity
For MMO developers, I’ve always believed that part of the problem is creativity. Which is ironic, because creativity is REALLY important. But the problem with creativity is that it doesn’t want to stay within the confines of a scope.

The plan (including scope) is a box. Thinking of an idea outside of that box (creativity) is bad for the plan. It might even be a really great idea – but it’s still outside of your scope. So do you incorporate that idea, possibly letting your budget or timeline slip?

Devs, I think, are more inclined to overlook scope implications because they like a new idea. At least, until they run out of money and have to release an unfinished project. And then, at that point, it’s simply too late to decide whether that was really an important enough idea to cause your project to launch unfinished.

The Plan
I’m not an MMO developer, but I have worked as a Project Manager in my professional life. One thing that I can tell you for certain is that ideas are cheap. Much cheaper than implementing those ideas.

The point being that it’s better to create your vision and your plan prior to even starting the project. Set your eagerness to BEGIN aside for a minute and think through the entire project from start to finish. Develop a comprehensive outline on paper of how everything will function together.

Think it through as thoroughly as you possibly can and THEN work to a proof-of-concept phase.  If that works – THEN STICK WITH THE PLAN.

Animated films are pretty damn creative. And guess what, they have a plan too! That’s because they come up with the ideas first, then storyboard the ideas. Then when they develop the animation sequences, they use rough animations to test the concept.