Archives for cov category
Filed under: Culture, Game mechanics, Opinion, Academic, Virtual worlds
One of the major problems of a game in which you can do anything is that… well, there’s not necessarily much of a reason to do anything. That’s a Terrible Idea recently had an interesting piece on the difficulty of generating goals and objectives in MMOs, especially in contrast with single-player games where your goals are equally pre-generated. The difference, as the article notes, is that single-player games have individual characters with a large impact on the game world. There’s no issue of making quests compatible with a wide variety of characters of different races and classes, until the individual motivations and goals can no longer fit into the equation. You don’t have anything but the end of content to shoot for.
So what’s the answer? The original post notes that it’s not really possible to reconcile anything but achievement-oriented goals within MMOs due to the fact that the character will still inhabit a static world no matter what you do. Certainly, there are attempts to create larger-scale impacts for individual characters, but so long as every character goes through the same content or has the same opportunities, there’s less of a sense of distinct accomplishment. Player-generated content in games such as City of Heroes offers an opportunity for a different path for each character, but there’s still not much of a difference in the actual process. Procedural generation is also bandied about as a solution to the issue, though it lacks any truly successful implementation at this point. Is there even a solution, or is this simply part of the weakness of the genre?
The trouble with goals in MMOs originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 29 Nov 2009 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Posted on November 29th, 2009 at 8:00pm by Eliot Lefebvre
Filed Under: academic, city-of-heroes, city-of-villains, coh, cov, cox, culture, game-mechanics, opinion, player-generated-content, thats-a-terrible-idea, virtual-worlds
Filed under: Culture, Game mechanics, Grouping, Opinion, Academic
Back in the day, there were two ways to play most MMOs — you could form a group with other players, or you could stay inside the cities and wait. Those days are long gone, of course, and it’s a rare game that doesn’t allow a player to do quite a bit without the support framework of a group. But there’s a point to be made about what’s been lost in the process, and We Fly Spitfires has an interesting take on how we now have to be pushed and prodded into grouping. There was a time when people were expected to group to complete tasks, but players are increasingly opposed to the idea as more and more becomes possible to solo and we grow less and less patient for finding a group.
Unsurprisingly, Game by Night brings up the obvious counterpoint: that evolving game design has relegated forced grouping to the past. There are more MMO players now than there were back then, and the majority of them started on games such as World of Warcraft or City of Heroes where grouping was only occasionally necessary, and even then only for specific tasks. By removing the requirement, player expectations become different, and there’s no longer a sense from most of the playerbase that soloing should be possible for a majority of tasks. It’s a debate that’s been had over and over through the years, but as the solo play model becomes more and more expansive, it no doubt will be revisted time and again — and attitudes toward it will shift as the playerbase does.
Grouping versus soloing as the genre evolves originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Posted on November 18th, 2009 at 7:00pm by Eliot Lefebvre
Filed Under: WoW, academic, city-of-heroes, city-of-villains, coh, cov, cox, culture, game-design, game-mechanics, group-play, grouping, mmo-history, opinion, solo-play, world-of-warcraft
No one was expecting the current 900-pound-gorilla of the MMO market to throw its hat in the ring regarding microtransactions, but the fact that it’s in the mix has forced a large number of people to take a look at the philosophies and patterns of the business model. Killed in a Smiling Accident recently put down some thoughts regarding the differences, explaining that World of Warcraft’s model is, in their opinion, inferior to the one found in the equally-significant microtransaction model of Dungeons and Dragons Online. The former has a store consisting of fluff items with no equivalent in the game, while the latter largely puts forth offerings that can be obtained in the normal game if you want to take the time.
Of course, there’s the obvious counter brought up in the comments: that it’s better to have microtransactions selling something you can’t otherwise get in the game. Simply take a look at Champions Online and the controversy over retcon pricing to see how the two can be better left untethered. Getting something unique is a nice bonus for a game you enjoy — for example, look at the bonus costume packs that City of Heroes sells. However, with items on sale that can be obtained from gameplay, the game can feel a bit more disjointed. There’s a case to be made for both sides, and with the free-to-play model gaining speed, it should be interesting to note where the majority of MMO players draw the line.
Filed under: Business models, Culture, Game mechanics, MMO industry, Opinion
Microtransactions and the splits in philosophy originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Posted on November 9th, 2009 at 11:00am by Eliot Lefebvre
Filed Under: WoW, blizzard, business-models, champions-online, city-of-heroes, city-of-villains, co, coh, cov, cox, cryptic, culture, ddo, dungeons-and-dragons-online, free-to-play, game-mechanics, killed-in-a-smiling-accident, microtransactions, mmo-industry, ncsoft, turbine, world-of-warcraft
