I’ve written before about what kind of game I’d like to play. These are supplementary characteristics of what I would consider an enjoyable (as opposed to commercially successful) MMO.

• Content on top of content. Abalieno is fond of deriding mudflation. However, the addition of non-erosive content is an ideal goal. Dark Age of Camelot did this better than EverQuest, but neither was without fault: absent re-itemizing loot drops, there was no point to going back to Varulvhamn or Spindlehalla for the drops, and instead hunting concentrated on fast xp or quests.

  First, a game world that expands at a reasonable rate (never as fast as players consume the content, of course) that actively keeps the item power curve relatively “flat” works to give experienced players new and interesting areas in which to hunt, explore, and compete, while leaving older areas viable.

  Second, items in the game should be imaginative. Four or five years ago, I believed strongly in the Diablo item generator: players should get randomly generated stat item drops, and even if eight out of ten were vendor fodder, they’ll still end up with some very good gear over time. It seemed to work well in DAOC post-Shrouded Isles. However, I feel now that there’s a degree of lore and identity that’s missing from those items: it’s no longer “Baron Wolfstrutter’s Braided Belt,” it’s the “Swirling Belt of Acuity.” (Note, many items are still designed in DAOC, especially from boss mobs and quests, but many randomly generated items are better for an individual character.) While designing drops admittedly takes a lot of time, I attached a higher personal value to the items, even if randomly generated objects (ROGs) had better stats and sold to other players much, much better. I believe it’s more meaningful for a player to be able to say, “I finally got a complete set of Feral Wulf gear” than “I hunted in SI for a couple levels and got some good stat gear.”

• Balance items, character stats, and player skill. Frankly, I have no idea how to do this well, but I’ll describe the end result anyway. One of the biggest gripes I had in EQ was that, short of being a naked caster, most characters were reduced to one-tenth of their effective ability upon death, prior to looting their corpses. I felt that EQ was a very gear-dependent game. DAOC, though less gear dependent, still required good gear in good condition to be able to fight with monsters. City of Heroes, by comparison, had limited gear (enhancements), and balanced player skill and character stats fairly well.

  Ideally, a naked or near-naked character, played by a skillful player, would be able to reliably take on a like-levelled mob. A well equipped character, with a less skilled player, would perform as well as the former. A skilled player, with good gear, would be able to reliably and simultaneously take on multiples of that mob. For this to work, I imagine that:

  1. You can’t hit autoattack and walk away.
  2. All characters have abilities that are usable in combat and are key to guaranteeing success, healing or revitalizing the character, or reducing the mob’s damage output. The use of these abilities, the timing and opportunity costs, reflect player skill.
  3. Character skills and damage scale at the same rate as mobs.

  I imagine that an equation describing this would look like:
  
{player skill & character abilities} + {equipment} + {character skills} = {mob equipment} + {mob skills} + {mob abilities} + 30%


  That is, a well-played character, with optimal equipment and skills, would be around 30% more effective than a like-levelled mob with optimal equipment, skills, and a decent script to run its abilities. Again, the key is that player missing some part of that equation would still be able to reliably succeed against like-levelled mobs.

• Players can handle mobs, one on one, or even two on one. Groups handle groups of mobs. Games like EQ change players’ targets over time: at low levels, taking on two or three mobs is reasonable, if your character is well equipped and you know what you’re doing. But by the 30s, a second even or high-blue mob in a duo or as a single character can spell your doom. By the 50s and 60s, without crowd control, characters would be overwhelmed by the incoming mobs. The target keeps sliding up, requiring more players to succeed against a single, like-levelled mob.

  At no time should a like-levelled mob be inherently stronger than a player character. Certainly, some will have more hit points, better armor, better equipment, or abilities that help it fight, but mobs themselves don’t get bumped up in difficulty beyond what is reasonable for their level. If it’s supposed to be a tougher mob, make it higher level.

  Likewise, when groups fight, they should have group-sized challenges, not just two or three mobs. All players should be using their character skills and abilities to their fullest to bring success, but any single character needs to be able to take a beating, and finish off mobs on their own, even the nukers and healers. No one should be a tank mage, but no one should be a paper tiger, either.

• Change the traditional mechanisms of hate and taunting. I hate to say this, because I really like to play this way, but get rid of taunt. It’s a DIKUism that’s become part of the background of MMOs. I still want my shield warrior to be able to defend the squishy members of the party at need, but I want the squishy members of the party to be pretty tough on their own.

  I don’t want mobs randomly targetting members of the party: low hit point characters are more likely to be attacked, those who are more likely to cause heavy damage are more likely to be attacked, and those who are healing or buffing are more likely to be attacked. That’s reasonable, unlike numeric hate lists where the chatacter with the most accumulated hate gets the aggro.

  Mob scripts should be simple finite state machines (simple example here), so mobs know who to attack, when, who to heal, and when to flee. Making the encounters a challenge with basic FSMs, varying the FSM scripts by mob, time of day, or even randomly, will all provide more of a challenge to the players. For example, imagine a group of mobs that when detecting the player characters, stalk them, waiting until the group is engaged in combat before attacking.

• Finally, limited PK. I’m not a fan of random PKing. I ran from everyone in Ultima Online (and cancelled a couple days later). An occasional trip to the Battlegrounds in DAOC was enough to keep me satisified, unless I needed Realm Points to get new Realm Abilities. I tenatively approach arenas in EQ and WoW because I don’t trust other players not to nuke me into a smoking crater.

  Players who want to PK or PvP should be able to do so. I used to believe in a PK switch the way WoW did it, until that turned into griefing. Because players will always grief, all PKing must take place outside of adventure zones. There should be no way to get loot drops, experience, or advancement in the PvE sense in any of the PK zones. While the PK areas can interesting and fun things to do, they should be a separate and segregated part of the game world.

  And, honestly, game mechanics are a lot easier if designers and developers focus on just PK or just PvE. Otherwise, you run into flavors of the month, exploits, subtle imbalances, etc.

• If you’ve gotta craft, make it fast. There’s nothing I like less than crafting that either cleans out my character’s life savings, or having to spend the same amount of time (or longer!) that it took me to max a character’s level to max a character’s crafting skill. I want my crafting efforts to go quickly, I want the skills to grow quickly, and I don’t want to play “factory,” by churning out identical items to resell to vendors. Crafting is a way to get gear that I couldn’t get from mobs other players, or to create custom sets of gear, not the reason I log in. WoW is the only game where crafting wasn’t utterly boring, and it still came pretty close.

I never claimed that my desires would make a game commercially successful. I do believe that they would keep me playing longer, as they would remove key points of frustration and boredom.