The Playground Model

[ramox]

For me it's raiding. I did it for 4 years straight and i still would if my real life would allow.
You see, i love multiplayer experiences but i can't stand competitive play (probably cause i suck at it) so all the shiny shooters aut therer are not for me.
This is where raiding apears. It's essentially nothing but a mass co-op mode. But that's what makes it awesome. You have to rely on 9, 24, 39 others to make things work and this can be oh so frustrating at times...but when it works...it feels oh so good ;o)

 

[Lord_Ascendant]

What do I want/like in MMORPGs? That I, as a player, am contributing to a story and also have the option once the story in complete to challenge myself with other things and not dick around for 2-3 days grinding levels or crafting 3 billion health potions so I can take on some giant boss thing for a little bit more arbitrary experience points.

 

[Wicky_42]

I like the idea. A bit like EVE, but then with EVE you need a good few years before you can make a meaningful contribution to a group excursion or to actually make progress from the majority of the non-combat tasks.

Keeping everything equally enjoyable and useful in a gameplay sense would be the challenge - for instance, if I want to be a full-time crafter, there needs to be the mechanics and market to support that, as well as mechanisms to prevent the insane inflation that an ageing MMO population can bring to player run markets.

 

[Lerxst]

Mine is probably somewhere between Explorer and PvPer. I like to sneak out and explore places I shouldn't be... and pick off easy targets while I'm there (not ganking, more like herb gatherers, miners or people just not paying attention to their surroundings)

I've only played a few games that allowed for any of these flaws in the generic MMO system. One was the original Ultima Online, another was Dark age of Camelot, EVE was pretty good about this too and the last one was Darkfall. Funny how I never gave Darkfall credit until after I stopped playing it and moved on. There you had a level-less character structure, open PvP & full loot system, and the ability to use any skill anytime.

The flaw, I guess, was the grind. How to get past that grind....?

 

[Captain Lag]

I was eating a fortune cookie while reading this and the fortune read, "The love of your life is right in front of your eyes". I looked right in front of me and it was the picture of Shamus on the first page...

 

[Arothel]

MMORPG's suffer from an interesting case of schizophrenia. They try to cover all the major bases of gameplay that don't always mix well. For instance, the leveling system combined with player verses player combat is inherently unbalanced, which is why games like WoW implimented systems such as the battlegrounds and arenas that even the playing field in terms of level. But then you have the gear aspect, where you may have several players all of the same character level but drastically different power levels based on their equipment. In this simple three-sided example you'll have avid pvp-ers with very different opinions on how well it works. This player might hate that you have to be a certain level to compete in the event, where another will hate that he/she must spend time getting throttled in order to earn the gear to give him/her a fighting chance. And then you'll have those who believe level and gear should not be a factor in competitive play, only player skill should influence the result. You take away the levels and gear and you leave everyone with no reward system for their time and effort. And thus the conundrum continues.
You aren't going to please everybody, which is precisely what an MMORPG tries to do. I must say I've never played an MMO that wasn't also an RPG, but it seems to me the genre itself is somewhat limited. Not flawed, just limited. Jack of all gaming types, master of none.
As for myself, I enjoy bringing a character from low levels and power to high. I enjoy questing and I am one of those crazies that actually read the quest texts most of the time. However, I also enjoy head to head competition, as long as I have the time to hone my skills.

 

[whaleswiththumbs]

Depends, really. If i know a healthy amount of people in the game who are helpful and everything, and i have a character already at their level, then it's group play definitely but i usually solo, but i want it to feel like there are a healthy amount of people in the game not like," heres a mmo, but all the people seem to have left this area, but your stuck here so enjoy it.After someone may come through eventually you can friend then never see again."

 

[Poomanchu745]

When I was looking to get Aion before it came out I ignored my friend telling me it was a Korean grinder. I said the game looked good and the combat seemed fun so I would give it a go. I had a lot of fun up until level 30. Then I hit the "fun cap", the point where not grinding was really not a choice. I started grinding hoping I would be able to run an instance soon or knock out some pvp. After about 24 hours worth of grinding the SAME mobs straight I quit the game outright. Now NCSoft may have wanted people to spend more time playing the game up until the level cap but in effect it made me quit the game. Well that and the gold sellers who they ignored and let run rampant. I think since NCSoft is a korean country they didn't care about the gold sellers because they were letting their cousins makes some money.

 

[TwistedEllipses]

I'm not a fan of the leveling up system. It seems that grinding is integral to it if it doesn't give out exp like sweets (which defeats the point of having exp). I'm very much a solo quester/explorer, so I'm fairly unusual as a player of MMOGs...

 

[Master-Jedi]

MMOG's (WOW in my case) for me are mostly about the exploration. In wow there are a abundance of ships and old ruins that are fun to look at, and usually there are treasure chests in them. Also, having other people around is helpful at times. PVP, raiding and group quest are the reasons I don't play MMOG,s anymore. Oblivion is better anyway. On oblivion I can kill all the idiots if I feel like it. On WOW I can't when they are on my team.

 

[gim73]

I have become an achievement whore. I love getting achievements in WoW. Despite what is said, WoW does reward you with stuff for exploring. If done at the appropriate level it rewards you with decent xp. Complete exploration gives you achievements and a tabard.

Fun holiday quests are a bonus as well. While some are annoying and try to get you to pvp despite all your objections, others take you to places you've never been before. Dire Maul was all the rage back in the day, but now you really have no reason to go other than finding the elder. Most of the Outland dungeons are like this too. With the new group matching system you are ABLE to actually get into these dungeons at the appropriate level again, but you don't really have to.

Compared to games where all you CAN do is grind (FFXI), WoW gives you MANY options to level your character. The fact that most of your xp comes from quests rather than grinding mobs really counts for something. More dedicated PVP characters can spend their entire level range playing in battlegrounds for xp.

Most of the activities give achievements as well. I take pride in all my achievements, and avoiding all the actual pvp achievements (VoA is a raid in a pvp zone, not an actual pvp achievement). If I was in a playground I would probably be on the slide.

 

[Mr. Mike]

Being a Guild Wars fan here (only MMOG I've played for a decent amount of time), I find that the grind is somewhat lessened. That end game stuff doesn't take long to get to when the level cap is 20. I s'pose the grind itself comes from getting all the right gear, skills and loot for yourself and your heroes. But even then, with weapons having a ceiling as far as attributes are concerned, it's all good.

Although the linear nature of it would probably turn some people off who want to access something that's only available after going through so many "campaign" missions...

 

[SirPumpkinLongshanks]

I'm wondering what a good alternative to what MMOs do now would look like.

We have levels and gear. Would it be better if it was just gear? It would mean top-tier players could make a new character and just buy adequate gear for them. On the one hand that would be really convenient but on the other it would remove some of the satisfaction you get from actually playing the game.

But then we have grinding. Me, I actually like a good grind. I don't define grinding as the part of the game that keeps me from doing what I really want but rather part of the game wherein I zero in on improving my character in a specific way. However, a greater variety of things to do level-by-level would be much appreciated. In WoW you're stuck soloing until level 60, if not later, the way the game is currently structured. Nobody runs the old world instances while they're at the proper level for them.

What if they increased the spread of the content? What if they made it possible to turn off XP gain at any point so that level of play would determine the complexity of the game? Levels 1-10 would be your tutorial and level 20 would basically be easy mode with lots of story dungeons and even some 10man raids. Talents and gear could act differently at different levels so as to streamline the gameplay and keep things balanced.

This makes me curious what Blizzard will do with Cataclysm as I know they're going to redesign the whole world from the ground up. Considering how much the game improved in the year I was away I imagine they'll come up with a few pleasant surprises in the new expansion.

 

[silversun101]

To answer your question, Shamus, I guess I would also call myself an explorer. The first time I ever played WoW, I made a Night Elf, watched the little intro, looked around for a few seconds and then immediately turned and headed straight out of the starting area. I saw the quest giver. I realized he had something important to say to me, but I wanted to look around first. I made it all the way to Darnassus and back, exploring as much of Teldrassil as my level one status would allow before finally returning actually picking up the quest. The first time I LEFT Teldrassil, the crowning moment of the game, when I hopped onto the Hyppogriff and watched that giant tree fade into the distance, only then did I actually realize what a huge world WoW actually was.

During my time playing WoW I never once met the level cap. Not ever. I'm such a sucker for immersion that any time I found a new area I'd explore it top to bottom. I would fully read any quest giver's text to the chagrin of any impatient player I was currently grouped with. I saw my character as a CHARACTER, with a personality and feelings, not just an avatar to represent my online equivalent. Of course, I had joined a PvP server at the encouragement of my younger brother (who first introduced me to the game), so these things were mostly kept to myself and my sketch pads. I never even set foot in on an RP server until I had long ago lost interest in the game, and the subtle lack of any substantial role play among the populous did little to re spark my enthusiasm.

I am fascinated at what a "playground" MMO might offer.

 

[BarGamer]

The gathering in pre-Burning Crusade WoW made it so that crafting was fun and easy. If you didn't want to go out and get it yourself, you could almost always find it for mildly-reasonable rates on the Auction House, (your milage may vary by server/faction.) Then they screwed it up, so I moved on to Guild Wars.

In both games, I enjoyed Solo Play, a little Grouping, and just enough Exploring so that not all the sewer-holes looked the same. I generally avoided Raiding, mostly because my build was personal taste and not necessarily optimized, and I loathed PVP.

 

[Fearzone]

I would personally like an MMO that lets me level up and gear up doing nothing but playing Battlegrounds. Warhammer Online came close to that ideal but had too many faults to be the solution.

The game in RPGs is to empower your character with gear, talents, levels, etc. There are right ways and wrong ways to go about it--good players know the right ways, i.e. picking the right instance with the right boss that drops the right staff and then doing it until you get the high roll. Pretty much you are strategizing how to budget your time for the highest payoff (though, honestly, nearly always the best solution is to forget about gear and just grind levels). If you are cool with that then RPGs are perfectly good entertainment and generally deliver a lot more hours of single-player fun per purchase, way more, than pretty much any other game type.

 

[Warrior Irme]

My favorite part of gameplay in an MMO is that which involves a casual group of people working together to accomplish a moderately challenging dungeon. I think Pre-Buring Crusade WoW is a great example. A very high percentage of players were leveling so the whole world was being used. I think a couple things should be instituted with MMOs that would work exceptionally well with allowing new players to participate with older players.

Level Sync was first seen in FFXI and in my opinion is one of the best aspects of that game. Can't get a group together in a zone because you are short a damage dealer? Is there a higher level one wanting to group for something? Have them come join you and sync down to your group's level. He get's the same exp you do because he temporarily levels down to where you are, and your group fills up allowing all the other lowbies to fight over gear. There are some flaws with this system but it works more often than not.

The Second thing I think should be transposed into other MMOs from FFXI is level capped dungeons. These were very difficult fights that require a lot of cooperation. The lowest level ones started at level 20 when the level cap is 75. This allows higher level players the challenge of the fight and lower level players don't have to wait as long as say WoW to get into a raid difficulty fight.

I like the idea of a playground, though I do think there needs to be at least some way to tell a player that a certain aspect of the game requires this entry level task. We don't want to toss new players that don't understand class roles in a group that requires a lot of knowledge with the class of choice. It isn't fair to the new player getting the hate from others.

 

[Pots]

Want a playground MMO just wait for Mortal Online to be released, its currently in open beta.
No level system, just login create a character and live in the world. They just released a new trailer on their webpage http://www.mortalonline.com/

 

[Fearzone]

World of Warcraft is a playground where you have to play on the spring horse for 80 levels-- though if you find 4 other people you can occasionally use the slide. Now at level 80 you can use the swings and jungle gym, but you have to find a group of 20 others to do it.

Warhammer Online is a playground where you can use all the equipment, but the swing lag, the sea saw is broken in half, and somebody barfed on the slide--so everybody just gets in the middle and beats up each other.

Champions Online's playground has one sea saw, one swing, and one spring horse. But everyone is dressed up in cool costumes and pretending they are super heroes.

Eve Online's playground is an empty grass field, where you can dig holes and chase the occasional squirrel. Now you've heard there are swings and seasaw's somewhere, and you keep reading how awesome they are, but hell if you've ever seen them.

 

[Tharwen]

The spring riders add an appeance of variation and choice to the otherwise climbing-frame filled park.