I have previously recounted bits and pieces of my experiences in StrangeMUD, the game that introduced me to online roleplaying and was my gateway drug to the MMOs of today. These days, StrangeMUD is still up and running, but the population is thin; when last I logged on, I saw only one other player who was as surprised to see me as I him.
There were likely several reasons why people started to leave StrangeMUD back in the day, but I remember one such reason very clearly. Back then we didn’t have quests unless an Imm was online and had declared that this day was the day we would Quest(tm). Usually we would log on, go to a few well-known areas, kill the famous mobs for their famous drops, chat, maybe group up for a particularly difficult kill, etc.
However, since part of the process to become an Imm was to create an area of one’s own, some Imms felt slighted that players did not frequent their areas, as some areas were clearly more popular than others. There were prolonged and heated debates on the game’s bulletin board about the matter. In an attempt to make sure that everyone’s areas received visitors, game-wide nerfs were put into place; suddenly, you would kill that favored mob that dropped that wonderful cloak, and find that not only was he more difficult to kill, but he no longer dropped anything. The solution, the Imms said, was to explore! Go out and find those other areas, they said.
The problem with this decree was, of course, the harsher nature of online RPGs in those days. Not only did you have to be careful not to be killed lest you leave your corpse (with all its loot and gold) behind in a hostile area, but there were death traps as well, which would simply destroy every item you were carrying without hope of retrieval – and being in a group rather than a solo player would in no way mitigate the loss. Most of us playing the game had no intention of wandering around the game world blindly hoping to stumble upon something interesting when so much precious loot was at stake.
Furthermore, the daily practice of logging in and “running the rounds” so to speak was part of the social life of the game. With that missing, people simply… stopped coming online. I watched the “who” list grow shorter by the week, until I, too, started forgetting to come back.
The moral of this story is that some people, by which I mean at least myself, like to explore, but do not necessarily like being hindered in our attempts due to either arbitrary difficulty spikes, acts of game god, or level gating. I am seeing three general trends represented in current and upcoming MMO’s approaches to the matter (sandboxes notwithstanding only because I don’t play sandboxes):
Rift (the prevailing mindset): Some things simply should be able to kill you if you wander into a higher-level area than your own. Get bigger numbers to counter their numbers. I say this is an example of the “progression model” because as with most MMOs, the emphasis is on growing your character number-wise, and level-gating serves as a carrot for players to pursue: to one day be powerful and well-geared enough to be able to safely explore that content. Level first, explore later.
Guild Wars 2 (we’ll fix it or die trying mindset – see also City of Heroes/Villains and Everquest II for similar, though not identical, ideas): You’ll always scale up or down to the area you’ve entered so that your numbers will roughly match the mob’s numbers. I call this a “bandaid model” because it doesn’t get rid of the level-gating (or levels) so much as it seeks to make those levels less relevant via scaling and side-kicking. It does raise the question of why we should bother with levels at all, but in this model exploration is king, since there is nothing keeping you from running over that hill yonder.
The Secret World (you’re not in Hyboria anymore): No levels, only skills. There will be mobs you can only take down using skills you can only purchase after you’ve earned a certain amount of xp (or purchased their pre-requisites). I call this the “oh what the hell, let’s try it out” model because given that The Secret World is a story-based MMO and not quite a sandbox, I’ve no real idea what effect this will have on exploration or how open the world will be (can you even wander the world without unlocking areas via story-based missions?).
Since neither TSW or GW2 are out yet, I will have to withhold judgment as to which of these models I would prefer, but I can easily state that I am quite tired of the first model, boy howdy. Exploration, and primarily story, are what drive me in an MMO, and current offerings can be admittedly weak on story, and then gate me from exploration on top of that.
What would an MMO be like, if it just let you wander without fear of death by numbers? It would have a different audience than many existing MMOs to be sure, but – what would it look like? Does this idea begin and end at games like Myst URU?
I wonder.
Or, devs could try to handle mob level distribution in areas the way LegendMUD does it – no recommended level zones, with the exception of “elite” type areas, so that every area has a range of every level of mob. So that whether you’re big or small, every area holds something for you. Most mobs in most areas are not aggressive (though it goes without saying that if you accidentally tromp into a vampire’s lair in Victorian England, it’s going to try to chomp on you. But stay in the reasonable part of the city, and if you’re a baby, you can kill rats, as babies do; if you’re a big person, you can hunt bigger prey, including, but not limited to the (un)friendly neighbourhood vampire.
And build 90% of your areas like that. It’s absolutely freaking beautiful, makes your world so rich, forces your designers to think holistically, ensures that high and low levels and everyone in between interact over your entire world and not just in restricted or specific zones.
IMO LegendMUD solved the problems you’ve outlined here years ago, simply, elegantly and beautifully.
So why has no other game ever done this?
I have no clue. Maybe because it’s too much work to expect area designers to understand their entire world while writing their areas. Maybe because it takes too much time and resources. Maybe because no one else has ever thought about it, or found it worth it should they have done so.
But that is something I so, so wish I could see in a game again.
It sounds positively heavenly *sigh*.
I love exploring in games in general and I too am sick of the Rift type game. Once you outlevel a zone you can go back and explore it I suppose but knowing you can stand still with every mob in the zone beating you up and never die somehow lessens the thrill.
The LegendMUD system Nugget described also sounds really good.
@Nugget That’s actually a rather intriguing idea. I would think the problem with it for many games would be more a thematic problem than a technical one. “Most mobs in most areas are not aggressive” can work for the streets of London, but it might be harder to justify storywise if you are, say, walking into Orthanc past the White Hand orc hordes and most of them just stare at you unless you attack them. :> Still, in a game whose theme supported it, that could be a very interesting way of handling it.
There is of course the large segment of the population that would be disatisfied with a game that had no real progression model in terms of levels and the like. There’s also the question of whether a game can generate enough content to keep explorers exploring if there’s no level gating etc to slow them down.
That’s true, about the thematic nature. But then look at most parts of the real world by and large. People aren’t generally constantly on guard everywhere they go, unless they’re living in war-torn conditions. I don’t mean to say that there were NO aggressive mobs in LegendMUD outside of the elite areas, merely that they followed some kind of consistent internal logic. For example you were pretty safe on the streets of Bengal or Paris, but if you went into the jungle or the sewers under Paris (elite area, think Phantom of the Opera sewer theme), you could pretty well expect to be attacked. Same with the generally trodden paths in and around Tara in Ireland. Stay on the beaten path, and you get a distribution of mobs as I outlined above. Stray into the (much, if discreetly labelled with warnings) lands of the Sidhe, and you can expect to start getting tricked, trapped, attacked, etc. But it wasn’t instant, ‘Haha, nao you dieee,’ more of the difficulty and aggressiveness of the mobs rose, so you knew that things were getting dangerouser and dangerous. Culminating in the entrance to another elite area. But the point is there was no hard gating. If you were low level and Ingenious and slightly suicidal, there were ways for you to walk into at least the initial part of that area. (MUDfolk, one word, speed walking.)
I guess I rant and ramble, but it has to be seen to be believed. Not every area has to be totally – or even is totally – non-aggressive and safe. Danger spices most areas, but more in a way that makes (common) sense. After all, if you are alone and go out walking in a bad part of town, drunk and covered in bling-bling at 3am in the morning, you’re a chances of getting robbed are not exactly the most accurate of gauges of the safety of said city.
I think, perhaps, risk aversion, plus just not ever having seen something done, are also factors that lead to it NOT being done. Golden battery gods know that MMOs are still making the mistakes MUDs made left and right, with economy, class balances, and so on. Sometimes when looking at MMOs, I get the feeling that I’m looking at an industry where the gaming heritage is so rich, and yet with each progressive game developed, by progressively newer designers, that these designers know less than the old timers who originally picked the features and design ideas they chose to bring over, have forgotten.
Ohnoes, cranky and pessimistic ancient nugget batter is showing!
Flee
Flee
Flee
Panic! You couldn’t find a way out!
Panic! You couldn’t find a way out!
Panic! You couldn’t find a way out!
An ancient glob of grumpy pessimistic batter nearly sends you to the grave with its powerful glomp!
Flee
You flee blindly to the east.