The Architect Update for City of Heroes introduced user generated content.
I don’t want to sound arrogant or anything, but I know how to make the ultimate, World of Warcraft beating, MMO, and, because I’m nice like this, I thought I’d share, in the hope someone will make the game for us.
The next generation of MMOs is bound to have a huge number of new features, but I think there are four or five that can break new ground and create a completely new level of game. This is the first one: User Generated Content. When Bioware introduced the toolset for Neverwinter Nights, they created a whole second reason for owning the game, and extended its play time for gamers by a magnitude.
Recently City of Heroes showed that the idea hadn’t been lost on MMO developers (read our interview with the developer in MMOZine Issue 11), and the Architect update introduced the ability for users to create content. Within a week they had created more content for the game than the developers had managed to create in the five years of support for the game.
It’s a simple fact that gamers will always outstrip the ability of developers to provide content in MMOs. We will always finish what there is to play before the next update is available – look at World of Warcraft and the army of developers they have, and yet the content is almost always played through by some within days of release.
What’s needed then is a community tool for content creation, coupled with some ability to monitor and control quality. It’s no good just swamping your game with rubbish content. Ideally it needs some form of QA testing before going live. But if it can be done successfully, then developers can spend some more time working on new game features and maybe even bringing in new level caps between expansion packs, rather than having to write more “fetch me this” and “kill me that” quests.
So that’s the first feature on my checklist of what the ultimate MMO needs to have. Have you played any of the CoH user generated content? Do you think this is the future for MMOs? Let us know.
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April 28, 2009 at 11:25 am
It looks as though other MMO’s will be following in Coh’s footsteps, with EVE online (possibly) opening up the tools for creating Epic Mission Arcs to the players and Eskil Steenberg’s LOVE also relying alot on players co-operating to manipulate the world around them (though there is still some debate as to whether LOVE actually counts as an MMO, with a limit of 200 players per server and no PvP)
User Generated Content (UGC) has been a mainstay of PC gaming for nearly a decade, with forward looking developers actively encouraging players to develope mods and maps for their games. It is only natural that MMO developers should wish to tap the almost limitless numbers of talented and dedicated players willing to build on their product.
The success and failure of these efforts will depend alot on the filtering which is put in place to weed out the rubbish which such schemes are bound to generate. It may be that the sheer volume of content generated by players for CoH out stripped that created by the developers in a matter of days, but how much of that content is actually any good? I’d be willing to bet that it is quite a small proportion. The filtering is key, as the content available in your game, even if you did not create it, reflects on the game itself. A game swamped with sub-standard, player created content, with the good stuff being hard to find, is going to have image problems.
April 28, 2009 at 11:42 am
I agree, nobody is going to risk a game by allowing unfiltered content into it. Some form of filtering, and I’m not sure community based filtering would be enough, is essential to ensure user-generated content adds to the game, not detracts from it. I would guess that is why NCsoft dipped its toe in the water with an older, smaller MMO, rather than, say Guild Wars, though as the developer says in our interview in MMOZine, they also had a mechanism for where user-generated content would fit within the game world. In fantasy MMOs, such a separation would be harder. But, having seen their success, the idea of UGC has got to be one other MMOs are looking at – I hadn’t heard about the EVE possibilities. Sounds interesting.
April 29, 2009 at 1:18 pm
[...] mentioned in the poster’s previous article, various MMO developers are relieving themselves of the burden of content creation by allowing the [...]
April 29, 2009 at 7:41 pm
Event persistence would be nice, but how will you farm your instances for those badly needed gear upgrades? Oh wait, you can’t. That’s one of the major issues I have with fantasy based MMOs. Running an instance multiple times just to get a set of shoulders, gloves, etc… That breaks the immersive aspect of an MMORPG.
I would like to see your “tier-N” gear handed out by completing quests in progressively more difficult zones, not inside instances. Instances should be reserved for world storyline events, not gear upgrades.
April 29, 2009 at 7:49 pm
I think you’re actually talking about How to make the perfect MMO – Part 2 but I agree farming instances for gear is just tedious. It also rewards only one type of MMO player, the serious raider. More casual gamers who maybe only hook up for impromptu parties have no chance of getting all the best gear, which is very frustrating. I think that there’s little reason that the best gear shouldn’t be rewarded from quests (I have another idea too, but more on that tomorrow), other than the fact that by doing it in the current way it gives a reason for players to replay content, and that is a driving force behind a lot of elements of current MMO gameplay. Content gets eaten up quickly, so it has to be produced in a way that makes gamers replay it. Again, something we simply wouldn’t tolerate in a single player game.
April 29, 2009 at 8:00 pm
Yea, I was still dwelling on the previous article when I read this one.
Eve – Online has the user generated content formula IMO. Give people regions to explore, let them build stations, allow them to defend their territory. It’s simple, but effective. It’s a shame in some ways that the game has such a steep learning curve. It’s a great one.
May 5, 2009 at 8:00 pm
[...] Part 1 – User generated content that passes through a quality filter [...]
May 6, 2009 at 1:19 am
I’ve lost interest in reading this series of articles already after reading this statement:”…and maybe even bringing in new level caps…”.
If anyone thinks a leveling treadmill and extending that leveling treadmill during game development is part of a ‘perfect MMO’ then we have no common ground from which to proceed. The concept of leveling is nothing more than an enormous grinding and boring timesink to begin with. If the author can’t even break far enough out of the box of lazy, uninspired game design to recognize the fault in a level treadmill and the insult to injury of extending the treadmill even farther with content updates then I don’t see how they could possibly have any insight into what MMO’s should be evolving into.
May 6, 2009 at 9:51 am
I don’t think I was trying to imply a “levelling treadmill”. If you read the rest of the series, you’ll see what I’m trying to sculpt is a more immersive world. As part of that you need to have some feeling of progression for the gamers, and so far, I’ve not seen an RPG manage this without some form of the levelling. The problem, as you point out, is that for MMOs, levelling has become synonymous with grinding. Hopefully, we can get rid of that idea though by implementing all these ideas?
May 7, 2009 at 2:15 am
I can get behind the idea of character progression, but not in the form of extending a leveling cap. As an example, Guild Wars had 40 levels during beta and released with 20. A number which was never increased with additional content. That game, in my mind, was designed around having an enormous amount of endgame content, which I greatly appreciated. Leveling, for me, is always a chore in MMO’s because I am PvP focused and want to ‘get leveling out of the way’ so I can start to enjoy the game. Now I wouldn’t presume to speak for any gamer population beyond myself, but we can all have a personal vision of the ‘perfect MMO’. =)
May 13, 2009 at 11:18 am
[...] How to create the perfect MMO – Part 1 – User generated content How to create the perfect MMO – Part 2 -Persistence and story telling How to create the perfect MMO – Part 3 -Crafting How to create the perfect MMO – Part 4 -Character customisation How to create the perfect MMO – Part 5 – Simulation How to create the perfect MMO – Part 6 – Homogenisation [...]
May 17, 2009 at 11:25 am
DotA Allstar game is the best !!!
December 16, 2009 at 10:49 pm
You’ve identified the biggest problem with MMOs, i.e. that there are different types of players. The 13 years don’t want to play with 40 year old and visa versa, powerlevelers don’t want to play roleplayers, etc. etc.
The feature that MMOs need more than any other is to match people with others that they will get on with and keep them away from people they won’t be able to stand.
My idea to make MMOs much better than they currently are would to develop a sophisticated system for putting groups together. For example, players could go to an innkeeper and ask him to get a group together to go to a dungeon at 8:00 the following evening. The innkeeper would invite players of the right level, giving priority to players with whom you shared mutual friends, avoiding players who either you or your friends had put on your ignore list in the same way facebook finds potential friends. The game could use e-mail to contact players off-line. Apart from matching people up who would get along, it would also sort out most boring part of MMOs, trying to get a group together.
Players could be given an incentive to arrive on time by gaining a good reputation with the innkeeper and getting priority in being invited to new groups in future. Most importantly griefers could be kept from others, particularly new players.