Should We Structure The Game Like An Mmo? (Mega-Discussion+Feedback)

[noveltyhero]

Hey guys,

 

After seeing quite a few topics I just have to ask, should we (community and devs) structure the game's core interactive, economical and statistical mechanics as such of an MMORPG?  (or at least to a certain degree)

 

 

This is all my opinion and don't take it as anything else:

 

 

Most of my experiences below are from my childhood having the luck to experience some of the best games that I fear I will never experience again, 9Dragons, Zu Online and Runescape. (at certain prime moments of their lifetime)

You can say whatever you want about those game, somehow I joined them when they were in their peak moments of best balance for developer and player.

 

By playing the game you got what you wanted as did the developers and overall I look back on them as part of my gaming life. How you interact with a game and its community can drastically affect your social status within future games and/or communities and your actions -heck it may even affect your real life.

 

 

Social Interaction

Here is how it was in Runescape or 9Dragons, I'd simply go around trying to find something to do (overwhelming amount of things and lack of english did not help XD) and every once in a while a super crazy high level player would come to me.

-Do you know how that felt? It felt like this:

 

   Yeah they'd be like "Hey, want to tag along to *insert spooky name of location here*?" and I'd say yes and then they would take me where and just show me these really cool things that otherwise I might've never experienced. It is almost like player by player advertising, if that guy didn't do what he did the chances that I'd stick around were lower.

 

    What did he get out of it? He just helped a new player and to some that is enough, of course seeing this from a player with much more status than me I'd follow. So when I reached insane high levels I'd do the same but on a bigger scale. I'd get huge groups of newbies padded up and showed them around the world, it also gave a chance for me to re-see the game from their eyes.

 

    Pretty much all to it but to take from this is: to build a stronger community you can/should rely on your veterans. If they stuck around for such a long time they sure as hell won't let you down, I think I can safely say that my interactions with other veterans have been 9/10 positive and that is brilliant.

   I try to help new players but more often than not the tools are just not there, most of the time the game is incredibly unsociable which in my opinion really hurts it in the long term.

 

 

 

Economy

Now two of the games listed above had free trade like Warframe does: 9Dragons and Runescape.

It did not hurt the game at all, from an early level you would be exposed to it by people selling stuff and later on when you had some cool things you would sell them. However let's take a look at some of the more indepth items that helped new players as well as old players:

 

9Dragons

From level one you had these "blood points", if the counter reaches 1,000 kills it resets and gives you "Blood Essence" (BE), if you died however it would reset thus making it a niche little thing that did bring frustration but it helped.

 

Anyway, BE was used by players at all levels, it allowed you to upgrade your weapon. So when you have gotten one of the most perked out and strongest weapons in the game for your class you would use 20+ of these to polish it up. Each was worth 1mil gold (~500k credits) within the community and 1k gold if you sell at NPC (yes I made that mistake).

 

As a new player when I got one of these it didn't break the economy for me, it gave me a boost. It allowed me to perk up, enjoy the game and go around looking pretty (some cosmetics) thus making it more enjoyable. It gave me as a new player that push needed to be able to go around shops buying the best weapons constantly to stay ahead of the game, but. It also gave old players things to do and sink their money in. Like now in Warframe there are players who sit on millions with nothing to do, a few of these babies would empty them up. Just food for thought there.

 

 

Runescape

From early on this game new players can get lots of money from veterans for base resources. High levels will not bother getting the low level things because it is more profitable to just buy it from new players. This created this whole hierarchical business system where players would fit nicely into sections that benefited everyone.

 

I remember going from selling ores and trees to selling animal fur to selling furniture to selling rare dungeon items. Every time I stepped to a new level it felt different, I felt rich and powerful yet I needed the new players because I was so rich I didn't want to waste time on petty things so new players helped a lot in that aspect. Again a strong economy that helped everyone involved, new players never felt like they had to get the rarest items and everyone felt relaxed in their own category. The jumps were scary but it felt refreshing, "damn I used to come here everyday selling ores for 10 gold, now look at me selling furniture for 5k gold a piece" and it did not break the economy.

 

 

Zu Online

This game had a different take to it. Its methods were: you want this? come and get it. How much time you spent was up to you. i.e I needed some shards to craft something, I went to this place and I killed a lot of enemies for those shards. The way that system worked was: guaranteed drop but you may require lots of it or the enemies will not be easy.

 

Sometimes it was so hard especially if they all aggro'd on you that you'd either come back 10 levels later or call in some vet who can demolish them all. This made the game seem fair and thus it never felt like I was getting nowhere with my actions because RNG sometimes can make you feel like you are doing something wrong without knowing what and that feeling sinks into you and is certainly not good. That feeling can also be experienced when programming, something breaks the code and you have no idea what to then find out you misspelled something or forgot an " half an hour later.

 

 

Take what you want from this, I am just presenting how these MMOs handled their economies and how profitable it was to the player and therefore the developer. See: 

 <-I support most of what is said in that video

 

 

Statistical Management (rankings, damage etc.)

What do I mean by statistical? I mean the way the game ranks you, your items, your enemies <->basically everything in the game that affects gameplay.

 

 

Zu Online+9Dragons (weapons)

I am going to go ahead and put these together because they are pretty similar. Both games allowed high level players to just give me the strongest weapons and items in the game, both games allowed me to go to the highest places in the game. However it did not break the game because I was limited this way: if the item was way above my level I couldn't use it.

Well it is more complicated than that as you could use it except it'd have a very high chance of breaking (on a percentage basis, 100% means its gone forever) and repairing them was too costly for someone below that actual level due to rate of requirement to repair

 

Anyway it meant that you didn't have power creeps and that was very very good.

 

Shortnote: Runescape handled expensive items given to new players by their value, if you died you'd lose items so you probably don't want to carry around insanely powerful gear all the time.

 

Enemies

The way levelling and enemies were handled was as follows:

1. Find area your level

2. Level up and move to new area because these won't level you up anymore

3. Repeat

 

Now you can't just jump to high level areas because you'd surely get killed easily thus losing on many things.

 

 

 

What this ties into with Warframe is seeing low level players in high level missions, either carried by others (which is fine) or because of one thing: power. Yes, I've seen those low MR excals running Boltor Ps and no skill required. There should be a fine and strong ranking system providing you weapons needed for your level. (granted you should be able to upgrade lower level ones, costing money resources and time but you get to keep your toy)

 

 

 

 

Take what you want from what I said above, I listed what those games did right and how Warframe can reflect on those but back to the question.

 

Do you believe that Warframe should be MMO-ised? To a certain degree of course.

 

My main problem is that I am not sure what to think of this game. What do I want it to be? A TSP MMO, that in my opinion is something not done much (Yeah Destiny did not deliver in that aspect, it looks like a fun FPS but not so MMO) and has a very strong potential within the industry, not that Warframe is not successful already.

 

Please remain civil, but what do you think? What is Warframe to you? Is it a fun casual game? Is it a hardcore TPS experience or are you like me seeing this game as a TSP MMO?

Thanks!

[Semshol]

I think the only element we need in warframe. Is a master/disciple kinda thing

 

Evil Tenno like me should train more evil Tenno and a system that rewards and facilitates that would be nice. Right now I can take them to games, but beyond playing together, there's not much in there lol.

[noveltyhero]

I think the only element we need in warframe. Is a master/disciple kinda thing

 

Evil Tenno like me should train more evil Tenno and a system that rewards and facilitates that would be nice. Right now I can take them to games, but beyond playing together, there's not much in there lol.

Yep, I posted an in-depth explanation on that kind of system following notionphil's thread:https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/313600-update-15-art-of-the-kill-wishlist/page-2#entry3550745

[Monolake]

The economics and progression of WF is somewhat broken. You can buy everything and have OP high-end gear in no time (as soon as you get rank 2 - that's basically 2 days if you don't fail the mastery tests). This results in people bypassing the entire ladder of weapons and ranking up mods - they become OP for all the normal content and faceroll everything.

 But then they find out there is no 'endgame' no challenge for the veterans, no other stronger things to aim for. Then quickly lose interest and quit. Pretty much missing most of the game and the satisfaction of levelling yourself and unlocking more stuff on your own w/o getting/buying it from other players. 

 

And Im not just talking about the Blotor prime issue (but its the most prominent manifestation of this problem). Power balance is allover the place. One of the strongest frames that trivialises all the normal game is the one you get to farm first. 

 

And its not just that, the progress is too much dependant on RNG. If you get no mods - you cant level up your power or weapons. 

So the answer is - farm some low level location where the mods drop. Or trade.  There is no way to make a sure progress through the Solar system. You might notice there are very few people playing mid-level planets. Because there is no incentive, you gain nothing from them, your progress is not connected with beating more missions. Noobs play lowlevel planets then they run void or derelicts for mods and primes. And grind Sechura  and w/e is there popular for fast XP.

Edited October 2, 2014 by Monolake

[noveltyhero]

The economics and progression of WF is somewhat broken. You can buy everything and have OP high-end gear in no time (as soon as you get rank 2 - that's basically 2 days if you don't fail the mastery tests). This results in people bypassing the entire ladder of weapons and ranking up mods - they become OP for all the normal content and faceroll everything.

 But then they find out there is no 'endgame' no challenge for the veterans, no other stronger things to aim for. Then quickly lose interest and quit. Pretty much missing most of the game and the satisfaction of levelling yourself and unlocking more stuff on your own w/o getting/buying it from other players. 

 

And Im not just talking about the Blotor prime issue (but its the most prominent manifestation of this problem). Power balance is allover the place. One of the strongest frames that trivialises all the normal game is the one you get to farm first. 

 

And its not just that, the progress is too much dependant on RNG. If you get no mods - you cant level up your power or weapons. 

So the answer is - farm some low level location where the mods drop. Or trade.  There is no way to make a sure progress through the Solar system. You might notice there are very few people playing mid-level planets. Because there is no incentive, you gain nothing from them, your progress is not connected with beating more missions. Noobs play lowlevel planets then they run void or derelicts for mods and primes. And grind Sechura  and w/e is there popular for fast XP.

I think we need some sort of "triggers" or heist missions where you are guaranteed to receive a certain reward. i.e XP packs, Mod packs, resources etc etc

 

RNG is not bad but the fact that the starmap is split apart so much is. i.e I never go on Uranus except for Stephano (T4 keys) but that is it, I never go on Mars/Neptune/Phobos/Venus/Mercury/Europa/Eris...which is a shame, each planet and each mission can contain side rewards and side objectives such as:https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/262718-how-to-leak-more-lore/

[(PSN)Zeylon]

I'd like a complex quest/mission system like many MMOs have, maybe a faction standing system as well.

 

We have so few lore/story/narrative hooks in the game right now.  Compare that to a starting city in some old school MMO like Everquest, etc. - and there's literally 100+ quests in some starting cities.  Series of newbie quests for new gear, quests related to trade skills, random "flavor" quests, higher tier quests, quests explicitly about raising faction standings, fighting enemies, etc.  WoW and other games have this as well, and it serves to expand the lore of the world and give players a chance to be engaged in the narrative.

 

Warframe has "factions" (Lotus, Grineer, Corpus, Infested, Red Veil...), and sub-factions within as well.  We get snippets of involvement with these factions, but it's all very surface and there's a general lack of quests.  One of the few quests we do have (Mirage) has very little faction ties, but does have lore ties.  There's room for both types I think.  Quests could be a reason to visit old planets again, reason to do things other than the "ideal" dark sector or tower grinding.

The game generally needs more content/lore anyhow.

 

Player market would be good too, our current system is horrible.  I speak mostly for the controller-wielding PS4 players here, but any trading system that requires you spend more time reading and arranging trades instead of actually playing is a poor system.

 

On a more random note, one thing I've always enjoyed in MMOs is tradeskills.  We already have a foundry... maybe they could expand that?  Not sure how it would work, but I've just enjoyed that kind of stuff in the past.  Special note given to systems like Everquest 2 and others that involve active player input and skills during the crafting process (leveling up your tradeskills in EQ2 unlocked various activated skills you would use during the crafting process).  Might give us something to do with all those spare resources too.

[noveltyhero]

I'd like a complex quest/mission system like many MMOs have, maybe a faction standing system as well.

 

We have so few lore/story/narrative hooks in the game right now.  Compare that to a starting city in some old school MMO like Everquest, etc. - and there's literally 100+ quests in some starting cities.  Series of newbie quests for new gear, quests related to trade skills, random "flavor" quests, higher tier quests, quests explicitly about raising faction standings, fighting enemies, etc.  WoW and other games have this as well, and it serves to expand the lore of the world and give players a chance to be engaged in the narrative.

 

Warframe has "factions" (Lotus, Grineer, Corpus, Infested, Red Veil...), and sub-factions within as well.  We get snippets of involvement with these factions, but it's all very surface and there's a general lack of quests.  One of the few quests we do have (Mirage) has very little faction ties, but does have lore ties.  There's room for both types I think.  Quests could be a reason to visit old planets again, reason to do things other than the "ideal" dark sector or tower grinding.

The game generally needs more content/lore anyhow.

 

Player market would be good too, our current system is horrible.  I speak mostly for the controller-wielding PS4 players here, but any trading system that requires you spend more time reading and arranging trades instead of actually playing is a poor system.

 

On a more random note, one thing I've always enjoyed in MMOs is tradeskills.  We already have a foundry... maybe they could expand that?  Not sure how it would work, but I've just enjoyed that kind of stuff in the past.  Special note given to systems like Everquest 2 and others that involve active player input and skills during the crafting process (leveling up your tradeskills in EQ2 unlocked various activated skills you would use during the crafting process).  Might give us something to do with all those spare resources too.

I love tradeskills, they would be hard to be implemented into Warframe but the foundry can indeed be improved in a waye. Tradeskills could work but very small affecting things like pet farming/controlling, building things, parkour etc.. as bonuses but nothing as big as how other MMOs do it because it is out of place.

 

I wan't more quests too, they are always exciting! ^^

The correct way to deal with these are player made quests, Neverwinter has them and boy let me tell you, they are so enjoyable I spent 3 hours on one..the game sucks though but those quests are the ones that encouraged me to stay for 20-40 hours