ok, how do I start this...
from the announcement of EQN cancellation, pantheon became the projection of my MMO's wishes, and I really want it to succeed.
The published "game features" and "game tenets" of the game are exactly what I look for, but the devil is in the details.
many MMOs had declared grand goals in the past, but very few could make it to the detail when the game reached the release, (from age of conan through gw2 to the current albion online).
usually I dont invest in game in such early development stage, I usually step in when i can actually test the product, and I am not keen to pay money just to post in the forum, so that bothered me alot about the game.
but then during the cohcarnage stream sessions, there were lots of questions to the Devs and lots of answers were "we havent decided yet" or "we havent really thought about it"
so I started to collect all my ideas that I had over the years, put them in more- (or less) coherent readable format and when i am satisfied with the result post them in pantheon forums.
I dont think that I know better than Brad and the devs how to design an MMO, after all they already designed a few and I have only played some (maybe almost all of them, but so do you guys...).
and I am not deluding myself to anything except that maybe my 5 bucks investment in this game is enough for Brad / Joppa or other devs to read my graphomanic ramblings and maybe if they are not sure about some aspect of the game i might give them an idea.
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other parts in the series:
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/6805/mmo-design-series-class-interdependence
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/6803/mmo-design-series-gathering
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/6804/mmo-design-series-crafting
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/6806/mmo-design-series-uncharted-waters
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world map structure:
this is the most important topic that I would like to adress in these series of posts:
what is the best way to build a world map?
what is the best way to design a region?
in most of the MMOs today, the map is streamlined, you start at zone A, all the map has the same level range content,
you level out of the map (or finish all the availible quests) and move to map B that is of a higher level where you level up until you outgrow the map and you move to map C, map by map continue to max level.
- it is bad because this method loses replayability, if you start an alt, your leveling experience is exactly the same as was your main.
- it is bad because it segregates the players by levels, players see only players their own level, never seeing high level or low level players, almost no connection between players that can lead to interaction and mentoring.
- it is bad because it makes the gameplay bland and players complacent , since the whole map is built around the player level there is almost no need to be careful in the world, no danger zones.
the better map design system is that every zone consist of several (at least two but three is even better) non sequential level ranges.
see the map below:
same geography, but multi level
-it is better for replayability, since you have several maps to choose from to grind your next level range.
and this is very different from choosing multiple zones of the same level.
- it is better for the community because you have players of several level ranges on the same map passing through the wilderness, using the same hub for vendors, repairs, auctions etc, makes natural ground for mentoring and guild recruitment,
low level players see high level players with awesome gear kill a boss in their zone and dont vanish but stay in the zone, thats inspires them, ties them to the game, make their leveling worth it.
- it is better for explorations and to keep the edge in the game, since the zone have several level ranges, you can't go everywhere, you must be very carefull not to overstep and pull some mob that you cant handle, this makes the world exciting and rich.
- it is better for the lore, as you can build a complete set of lore in one map: here are the regular people living in the village working their fields around the village (first level range), and here is the vast dark forest which people dare enter only during the day, people who enter it at night were never found again(second level range)
on the other side in the hills there is the evil necromancer tower , the whole swamp below is crawling with demons and abominations not even the bravest heroes dare to enter his domain. (third level range), one day you will get stronger and you will return to your village and clean the lands from the necromancer menace.
this kind of lore cannot be split to several zones because when they are in several zone there is no real connection between them.
at the map above (just a nice dnd map I pulled from the net, I dont know if it is from game or dnd module), you can see that it has a main city (Dragonshore) which serves as the main hub for the map for all levels.
starting players begin at "Darellas Farmstead" and as long as they are stay around the road and the countryside around Dragonshore and its lakes they are fine, they can move toward Tanglewood or behind "White Birch" if they feel bold.
20-25 level players can choose to go Drovins Cabin quest area because its close to the hub, to Stonebreak mines labirinth area (maybe they want to send mining expedition?) or just grind mobs behind Tanglewood Grove because its far and no one else goes there.
35-40 level players can duo/pug in stonebreak mountains, or if they have premade group they can go to the white birch elite area, which is the goblin prince stronghold.
how to build a zone:
placing mobs in a zone is an art of its own,
you dont just put random mobs or mob groups in the zone (there just so many game who do exactly this...) ,
you have to place them so it will make sense from mobs side, why are these mobs here what are they doing? are they on patrol? is there a camp? an orc village? bear den?
and it has to make sense from gameplay side, they must be in escalating difficulty and quantity from "safe" countryside to "dangerous" wilderness
this is important for many reasons, the players must feel safe around the castle and on the road, and should be able to have a directional sense of risk/reward,
closer to the road low risk low reward, small mob groups or even single mobs of lowest difficulty, further from the road it is riskier and more rewarding, medium groups of mobs lead by a harder mob, or a small group of harder mobs together,
in the depth you have groups of harder mobs led by elites or minibosses. on each stage players can move forward escalating the difficulty or fall back to easier challenges.
this way you can serve several game styles on the same map without major interference, you can have the solo/duo types who will stick to the road, kill couple of mobs and relax. you will have the small pug group that goes forward leveling on the mob camps,
they will not go for the single mobs because that would be inneficient and they can't go for the hard mobs, maybe the healer is low level or they dont have CC class.
and then you have full group of guildmates coordinated by voice chat with premade roles, they go strait for the elites with the loot chests, they will not waste their time on the groups when they can aim for the good drops, and if the tank disconnects between the pulls, they will just fall back hundred yards to easier mobs.
because when the whole area have the same average mob difficulty and quantity, the really weak players can't even kill a group and get frustrated, leave or whine, and the strong premade group anihilate everything in sight very quickly because whats the difference? all mobs are the same,
so the middle type of players are also frustrated because the strong group killed all their mobs in the area. so the devs nerf the mobs for the weak/solo players and then create instanced content for the strong premade group and you dont see them in the field anymore, and this is the start of the decline of the game.
(yes I am looking at you ESO and GW2)
you can see that the area around White Birch is also multi level one, with escalating difficulty, near the road and to the west of white birch you have the low level goblin camps.
under the mountains and to the east are the mid level goblin camps.
on the mountain itself you have the high level camps, increasing in difficulty toward the center and the nexus is an elite dungeon.
This is a really well thought out post and I have to say I agree with it for the most part. The questions I would have though are from a devs point of view because Ive never designed a game and just have played them. Has a game done something like this before? How did it work out and what was the feedback? When the higher groups fail a pull or get overwhelmed, do they scatter to the wind and train high powered mobs to the lower leveled areas where those players were slaughtered (Looking are you FFXI and the frightening while simultaneously hilarious zone message "TRAIN TO ZONE!!!" Or zoning in and seeing a graveyard at the entrance of the zone you just entered and immeadiately zoning out.). One of the things I really liked about FFXI and early WoW was seeing higher leveled characters and the amazing gear they had which was great incentive to get that gear myself. Some of that gear was super rare, so when you saw it it meant something. I'd be interested to hear if there is some internal data or logic about this because this design seems like a great idea but I can't recall many MMOs doing it this way. Why is that? Maybe it puts a limit on how questing works because you'd only have a small section of the zone for each leveling group? I'd def like to hear a devs perspective.
A big part of the appeal to myself, and I believe to many other players, is the ability to move forward in an objective way. That is, to get your ass handed to you in a zone and look forward to the day when you can come back and get your petty revenge. It gives a sense of forward progression that you need in any game.
While I agree that segregating the playerbase can be a very bad thing - I'm not sure I agree that complete de-segregation is the way to go either. Having hubs in one zone for multiple level ranges isn't necessary to ensure that players revisit those zones. Everquest handle this well by having one off mobs or even raid mobs that wandered the zones and were needed for quests - or even just to farm faction. The best and most extreme example to a zone that had a healthy playerbase of all levels was Eastern Commonlands. North Karana was another one. While farming wisps, I would still very often see many other players of all levels in the zone, either for griffins (and Grimfeather) or the werewolf that wandered around. Not to mention the random folks that used it as a place to teleport and advertize teleport services, which would undoubtedly lead to an offering of buffs. Social interactions formed organically with these types of paradigms.
Being forced to revisit the same zones over and over again is bad, and not fun, and ruins replayability. I agree.
Being forced to return to old zones, even as you level up, doesn't seem much more fun to me. I want that feeling of progression. I want to see new places and face new challenges in those new places. I don't want to go back to the zone I leveled 1-10 in when I'm level 50-55.
Instead, give many options for starting areas and have reasons aside from just leveling for people to revisit those areas.
I agree that many games have gotten this wrong. But I don't think we need to reinvent the wheel here. This has been done, and done successfully, in the past. We just need to bring it back.
Zazzaro said:This is a really well thought out post and I have to say I agree with it for the most part. The questions I would have though are from a devs point of view because Ive never designed a game and just have played them. Has a game done something like this before? How did it work out and what was the feedback? When the higher groups fail a pull or get overwhelmed, do they scatter to the wind and train high powered mobs to the lower leveled areas where those players were slaughtered (Looking are you FFXI and the frightening while simultaneously hilarious zone message "TRAIN TO ZONE!!!" Or zoning in and seeing a graveyard at the entrance of the zone you just entered and immeadiately zoning out.). One of the things I really liked about FFXI and early WoW was seeing higher leveled characters and the amazing gear they had which was great incentive to get that gear myself. Some of that gear was super rare, so when you saw it it meant something. I'd be interested to hear if there is some internal data or logic about this because this design seems like a great idea but I can't recall many MMOs doing it this way. Why is that? Maybe it puts a limit on how questing works because you'd only have a small section of the zone for each leveling group? I'd def like to hear a devs perspective.
the only game when I saw it working like that is knight online (maybe Linage1 also because it is has the same platform but i havent played L1)
although the game itself sucked in the long run, there are many many things it had done right, the leveling, grouping ,mob positioning and the pvp.
it also had a "dungeon" system where the dungeon has many levels and each level is of a harder difficulty, i.e the lower underground you decend the harder the mobs are. (one of the reasons is that the game had only one dungeon at that time... :) )