MMOG Creators On The Levelling Treadmill

Thanks to RPGVault for their article discussing the problems of repetitive gameplay in MMORPGs. The article defines the issue as "...the so-called "levelling treadmill" that involves repetitive play, often combat against NPCs that present little real challenge, in order to advance [the player's] characters" Representatives from NCSoft, Microsoft, and Auran offer their opinions, which range from "...levelling in and of itself is not evil" to "...levelling has to become dull or the level-up reward would lack value."

Quests can be as bad as the Treadmill

[Golias]

A lot of game designers look at the ruts that EQ and AC players complain about, and think "monster camping is no fun... what we need are more quests/missions!"

The problem with that is, if monster farming is a treadmill, most single-player quests (and their MMORPG equivalents) are monorails.

Sure, there are some people who really get off on reading all that carefully-scripted NPC chatter, paragraph after paragraph of it, like you find in a lot of NWN modules, but most of us don't fire up a High Fantasy Adventure game so we can read pre-generated text. If we wanted that, we could re-read our LOTR books, including all of Tom Bombadil's meandering poetry, a copy of which is probably sitting in the immediate vicinity of each of our computers.

Here's a little secret for you "let's make lots of missions" guys: Everquest if chock full of quests, but the vast majority of players find it less boring to "kite" wandering guards, "farm" bandits, or "camp" the minotaur caves than to perform them. The only popular quests are the ones which drop some coveted piece of l00t that you could not get any other way. In other words, most of the players don't find the quests all that much fun, and only bother with them for the rewards, so that they really just end up being an even-more tedious form of The Treadmill. Plus, questing limits both the options of behavior and possibilities of outcome.

When I talk to people who continued to play EQ long after the Level Treadmill got boring for them, they almost always say the same thing: They continued to play for the social aspect of the game. That's right, those "EQ Weddings" we all snickered at when they first started happening, along with silly player-organized events (such as the infamous Naked Troll Run) are what keep people paying their subscription fees for a game that it now very long in the tooth.

Why not develop a game which throws the D&D/MUD convention of levelling out the window entirely? A sort of Tolkein-esque version of The Sims Online, if you will. Create a world that's full of fun things for your avatar to do... really fun things, not just reward-driven things. Interesting game-within-the-game diversions that players can get involved in while making small-talk. Give out meaningless medals or something to show off to others when difficult challenges are met, rather than ramping up character powers in ways that can actually interfere with the social interaction which is the true drive behind the game.

Before somebody has a cow about my suggestion being less appealing than good ol' hack-n-slash RPG's, those games will still be out there. Go play EQ and see how fast you can level that Iksar Necromancer, and be sure to use the EQVault and Caster's Realm web sites to find the phattest quests, so you don't waste your time actually talking to NPC's.

All I'm talking about is the possibility of just one MMO game out there for those of us that just don't care about that sort of bullshit anymore.

That's what a lot of gamers want

[johnkoer]

There are a lot of gamers out there that are looking for the easiest way to reach their goal, so even if there were plenty of ways of getting experience, many (not all) gamers would still stay with the camp and kill method. I have met plenty of players online that come from an FPS to an MMORPG, all they want to do is PVP. So they basically just keep camping different spots until they are powerful enough to go PVP. They have no interests in the quests, unless it will make their guy more UBER.

They are basically looking for a different market, more like a MMOFPS.

From a Planetside player....

[Anonymous Coward]

All crap about weapon balance and bugs aside.

I love the game. The funny thing is I hate PvP in all other MMORPGs and that's all there is. The thing that draws me in is that I can be part of the big battles, still hit the BR20 (Battle Rating is your level) and take them out just as easily as a BR1. But I think that's the reason I can stand it. On Darktide in AC (the pvp only server) you portal in as a new character and you're immediately assaulted by X player that's probably 20-80 levels ahead of you just looking to make your day miserable. There is nothing you can do to stop him either. Planetside is very item centric and there are no items to search out, they're all provided to you just as long as you can actually use them.

Here's the downside to PS. The world is too big. Even with 1000's of players, continents are locked once a pop cap is reached, and there are never enough people on a continent to defend all the bases AND mount an attack. The problem really is taht per continent there are too many bases to attack and to defend. On top of that, the game is caters to the FPS crowd that wants "instant action". Thus there are options to drop you straight into battle, which is a bit ridiculous. Supply chains and vehicle lines can easily be broken past. The game also favors the attacker a bit much, and I feel, has limits in the character skill department (there aren't many variants on characters).