MMOG Crowd Control

[likalaruku]

Sounds like a trifling mess. I imagine the developers hope was that the higher level players would sod off & play something else, while a steady flow of shiny new gamers would wash up periodically. Unfortunately, MMOs have too much competition with newer games for that.

 

[w00tage]

Oh and Lulzy is SO LUCKY. She hasn't made it to the Barrows quests yet, and Turbine's done and changed things now so she can solo through. That Great Barrows forced-grouping quest was a total buttkicker, generally requiring a very good group or a highbee to come help - preferably a rockin' tank. The stupid crawlers alone could wipe your group, never mind the bosses.

That being said, if you had a solid group, it was a buttkicking adventure that you wouldn't soon forget. And you knocked off a lot of great lewt quests in there too.

 

[Twilight_guy]

My idea? Oh your not going to like this... Hard reset. After a certain period of time everyone gets thrown back to the first level on equal stand points. Now of course everyone who put time and effort into their characters is going to be enraged so some area will need to be devoted as a place where old characters still exist but the other area will have to be on this reset loop. It may not be a perfect (or very good) idea but it solves the issue of major discrepancies in ability and allows the developer to experiment with each reset and try new things. Obviously this straight up idea is stupid but I think it can be worked into something viable.

 

[RandV80]

Personally I like the suggestion of dropping the grind model MMORPG and making them sandbox games. For as they are now, couldn't there be a technical solution mixed with a bit of game design? I'm thinking WoW, Guild Wars, and Final Fantasy 6 mixed together.

First the game design: build two instances of the game world. First is the Standard Game world where you start at level 1 and grind your way to the top and 'beat' the game. Second is the End Game world which is technically the same place but the entire worlds been rebalanced as end game content. So that starting point where you whacked rats with a stick is now overrun with dragons or, something like that. In other words like FFVI's World of Balance and World of Ruin.

For the technical aspect, at launch you're going to have tons of people all at the starting point, and one year later they'll all be at the end with few at the start. So if you're WoW and you have say 10 servers, at the start devote 9 to the Standard Game and 1 to the End Game to control crowds. To make this up you'll need to open it up a bit, so that like in Guild Wars in communal area's you can jump between servers, people have limited access to move around. As people graduate to the End Game, shift the server balance until eventually you're running 9 End Game servers and 1 Standard Game server. This will crowd the beginners together so they're not randomly dispersed throughout all the veteran players. Maybe even devote 1 Standard game server to existing customers starting over, and 1 to complete newbies.

That should work shouldn't it?

 

[sneakypenguin]

Selectable levels for high ups, idk about you but when I played wow, I pretty much stopped at 73 and just ran instances for lower levels for people with my DK, It would of been much more fun to see LFM Tank DM, and then be able to drop to a 20, and just have my stuff scale down.

Or just keep the levels a LOT closer, the gap between 55 -65 in wow is insane, as a DK I almost trippled in health and DPS, going from 5k HP to 13k+. I would make it so that a level only increased 5% or so from a base. If you start at 100hp by level 20 your at 200 40 400. That way you could make it so that a 15 could quest with a 25.

 

[Spinozaad]

Destroy the problem by destroying the concept of 'levels'? I don't know how it would work exactly, but if you were to have a system where your starting abilities remain constant throughout the game (excluding, perhaps, the skills; which go from trainee - adept - master, and increase speed or productivity, or something similar. Nothing game breaking). Couple this with a very ingenious and complex damage system (both for players as for monsters) and dump the players in the persistent world.

Sure, the persons with the best gear would have a bigger chance of "0wning", but they too would never be impossible to beat, even by Jimmy McNewN00b.

Anyway, if you remove the levels, you remove the need for scaling gameplay. It might even decrease the e-penis comparing of achievement whores and power gamers, as defeating the Mighty Dragon of Mount Not-A-Nice-Place is not so much the result of months of grinding, but of experience and luck.

I doubt this would work, though.

 

[FavouredEnemy]

Would it be technically possible to dedicate servers to lower levels? Say, 4 servers for levels 1-20, 20 for end-game, and so on? I'm imagining NPCs placed in important locations that would allow you to transfer your character to the 'higher' servers.

The upside is that all new characters get 'concentrated' into a smaller handful of servers, and all are sitting in a far fairer economy with regard to gatherable resources - if you've ever tried using an auction house to boost your skilling at lower levels on WoW, knowing that a level 80 can't whomp in there and buy every last piece of copper, silver, tin, iron, mithril, all those engineering parts, and so on, would be lovely.

 

[Aquarion]

I quite like the City of Heroes approach to this. Instead of adding content at the top end, pushing this one single line of content far into the stratosphere, they carry on adding content everywhere in the game, and don't push the level limit up from 50 (and have no plans to do so). This means that L50s can do the Raidy type stuff (or there's a brand new Top End content system coming with the new expansion, no idea about that though), they can roll a new character with a new origin and go though again, touching stuff they've done before only lightly. Plus, the game will autoscale missions based on how many people you have, with not much content requiring groups.

On the opposing side, it encourages grouping with XP bonuses and the fact that the game is just a lot more *fun* with eight heroes bounding though the mission.

 

[Centrophy]

Destroy the problem by destroying the concept of 'levels'? I don't know how it would work exactly, but if you were to have a system where your starting abilities remain constant throughout the game (excluding, perhaps, the skills; which go from trainee - adept - master, and increase speed or productivity, or something similar. Nothing game breaking). Couple this with a very ingenious and complex damage system (both for players as for monsters) and dump the players in the persistent world.

Sure, the persons with the best gear would have a bigger chance of "0wning", but they too would never be impossible to beat, even by Jimmy McNewN00b.

Anyway, if you remove the levels, you remove the need for scaling gameplay. It might even decrease the e-penis comparing of achievement whores and power gamers, as defeating the Mighty Dragon of Mount Not-A-Nice-Place is not so much the result of months of grinding, but of experience and luck.

I doubt this would work, though.

I think that's how SW: Galaxies did that at first and if I recall it didn't work out too well. Now it could be argued that the skill trees could be construed as the games leveling system but that's not the point. The point is that system was essentially broken in the fact that certain skill builds became OPed (think Bounty Hunter/Sniper.) The other downfall of that system was that everyone was walking around in the same armor.

I just don't really know a good catch all fix. There are many good suggestions in this thread alone that might work in some games either by themselves or in combination with other ideas, but in the end AFAIK none of us are game developers. I think we need some good input from the people that have built these kinds of games as well as the ability for them to take ideas from developers of other types of games.

On an unrelated note: Anyone remember the awesome events that used to be held in Asheron's Call with high level monsters raiding low level towns and other crazy stuff? Why don't games do that these days?

 

[ravensshade]

In LOTRO, many quest chains end in a group quest. So, you'll do five missions solo and suddenly an NPC will tell you to sod off and find some friends. (And I do hope you read the quest text, or you might charge in alone without realizing you're committing a very humorous form of suicide.) You've just spent the last forty five minutes trying to find and save poor Gerebert, and now you realize all your work was for naught. You can't do it alone and good luck finding help.

**Confused**.. My Elven Hunter is level 30 now, has done most of the deeds/achievements/quests and hasn't ever had to run a group quest. Or if she has, she's aced it with relative ease.

Are we playing the same game?

heh during my trial i did group quests with my hunter on my own aswell so i'm kinda confused aswell..

 

[evilomega13]

Simple enough- Make creating alts more fun. I seem to remember City of Heroes/Villains always being just as populated at low levels as later on- in fact, despite it being a few years after relese when I last played it, the first few areas were MUCH more poulated than the later ones. I think it was to do with the large amount of character customization- be it in the huge amount of appearence options, or in the character build itself- meant that I(and probaly a fair few other people) constantly restarted and kept making new characters (Case in point- I played for a 2 or so years, but highest level I got was 29/50)

 

[Odjin]

Simple answer... go away from the grinding-festival of MMOs. The problem is the artificial "level" system. This is the source of the problem as with increasing levels players have to wander around the world to stronger monsters. But for some reason MMOs got stuck in the grinding-thinking many eons ago and can't evolve from there. As long as you sit on the level system it will never work as you are looking for since the level system requires these problems to exist to begin with. You can not remove the problems without removing the source of it, the level-system and grinding-festival, which though would be the dire treatment this whole genre needs since ages.

 

[Flour]

I was able to break the economy just by selling my excess herbs at the auction house.

How?

Surplus herbs just means plenty of cheap herbs for everyone to horde up. I don't play WoW, but I know the "economy" includes more important items like armor and weapons...

Even in 2008 WoW's economy did not revolve around armour and weapons. It's even worse right now, alts of end-game players all have heirloom items which level up with the character. Those heirlooms are some of the best items available at that level.
But to get back to the herbs, everybody needs high level alchemists for end-game potions and almost nobody wants to gather herbs. Hell, I played on one server for a year and in that time the price of basic low-level crafting materials nearly tripled while everything else only increased by about 50%.(only 50%, considering there were multiple 80s that reached the money cap) At one point a stack of the most basic ore and herb was sold for 20 gold, this later stabilized at 5-7gold per stack.

 

[lesterley]

Age of Conan solved this problem to some degree by making the first 20 levels of the game be primarily a single player experience. Of course, AoC had all kinds of OTHER problems...

Or, as I pointed out in a recent blog post (www.serialmmogamy.com [http://www.serialmmogamy.com/?p=360]) you do what Warhammer Online resorted to: Shoving everyone into a single starter area on one server.

Leslee

 

[UtopiaV1]

I think a better system would be two separate games in one, one where you can solo the whole thing, another for people who wanna play in groups. You can port characters over between the worlds, but one has quests for all groups and the other for just solo play. You can still chat between the worlds, and actually see people running around/sell and buy stuff in the solo game, but not quest with them unless in the group world.

Problem sorted, job done, who's for lunch?

 

[decadence]

How about a leveling system which depends on your experience points gathered and your current experience ladder position? If you keep falling back in the server ladder, you lose levels and are forced to come back to easier areas.

 

[Arothel]

Turbine has actually rennovated the entire level 1-50 line of Epic Quests. There's now a scaling buff that will allow players with the group quests to get increases to damage and health, and reduce incoming damage, effectively making them 'elite' players for the duration of the quests. It will also apply to some non-instanced quests, but there's more of a restriction there.

More information about the new system can be found here: http://www.lotro.com/gameinfo/devdiaries/628-developer-diary-volume-1-revised-edition

Edit: This rennovation occured with the latest content update that launched this week.

That seems to be a rather elegant solution to the problem. I wonder how it will fare. WoW has been on a campaign to make the game more accessable to new and casual players since Burning Crusade, so I'll bet it's just a matter of time before they do something similar.

 

[bjj hero]

I guess, approximately as much fun as you could have running a chat program and minesweeper at the same time. But my personal bias against MMOs aside, it isn't just some "jackhole", its a great many people. And when a significant number of people beginning ruining their lives, whether because of sinister marketing or some seriously lacking self-control, its time to either regulate or restrict. Gambling, is an excellent example.

In that case we'd better ban alcohol, drugs (good to see that worked), smoking, fatty foods, sugary foods, sunbeds, all videogames, the internet, infidelity... I could go on. There are people out there who are dying for an excuse to self destruct due to whatever charecter flaw. You can't ban or control everything. Even regulation doesn't work, look at drugs, gambling and alcohol. There are still people with problems.

You have to accept that adults are responsible for their own actions.

I mean back when I played WoW and one of my guild mates would complain about being bored in Tanaris or Felwood, I'd tell him to keep leveling in a few week he'd be in Northrend anyway... and it was true, so... what's the big deal?

You make it sound like a job. I work doing shit I don't want to do (if you knew my job you'd know it involves dealing with people I really don't want to talk to) so I can have fun on the weekend. One job is enough for me...

OT. The only MMO I've ever tried is EVE. There it is open world which would fix the empty world thing. People go where there is stuff to do, safe areas, shops etc. The dead areas... well its space, the clue is in the title I guess. I never got past a few trial sessions. I have friends who play and the thought of spending hours mining, my eyes glazed over, is not my idea of fun.

 

[benoitowns]

I remember back in....whatever year Burning Crusade came out...my guild destroyed part of the horde economy by farming the Blood Elf Bandit Masks in the Draenei starting area and selling them. After that I gave up my merchanting abilities while my friend made 1000s of gold buying and selling cross AH items to different places. I wish I kept trading in that game.....

 

[tetron]

After thinking it over I'd say this problem goes into the same category as the problem of class balancing. It's a problem that's impossible to fix and thus is a complete waste of time trying to fix it. However people do feel better knowing that somebody's trying to fix it.