Lessons from LOTRO

[PrestoAdam]

Hello all, it's been a VERY long time since I posted.

I've been hanging out in LOTRO, with great expectations of where that game would go. It is probably too soon to say that LOTRO will ultimately fail, but I already see signs of its faltering, and I thought I would share my opinion.

Ultimately, LOTRO suffers the same problem as WoW to me. It focuses to much on killing large amounts of virtual bad guys to get loot which neither significantly improves on stats, nor has the potential to increase wealth.

For myself, what I want in a game is adventure, fame, and wealth.

Let's talk about these things, and maybe the creators of HJ will take heed, or alternatively ignore another raving lunatic (me).

Adventure. It seems so obvious that players want to adventure, yet not since the days of Wizardry and Ultima IV have I really felt like I was on ground never before trod by another adventurer. It was riskier back then, dying had crappy consequences, but as I was the hero, I had abilities that mitigated those threats. When I play LOTRO, every 20 feet there is yet another creature I must depose to continue on my way. Yet, no matter which movie or book I pick, it rarely is the case that evil creatures so densely roam the land. Is creature-killing adventure? Not to me. It is just the easiest mold to code to for the developers of these environments. What happened to puzzles? Labyrinths? Secret Doors and traps? What happened to using my wits to accomplish a goal instead of my sword?

Fame. Yeah, I took out that foozle, and all by myself! Fame is great, but current games almost exclusively demonstrate fame through gear. Umm, I could give a rats butt what whiz bang shuriken of pain +127 you are carrying. Fame is about being well known, not about gear (to me). I loved walking around Stormwind in WoW when I was uber and as citizens walked by they would go, 'hey look, there goes the great (enter your name here)'. My question is why it never said anyone's name but mine? Heroes among heroes. There must be rewards that are less tangible, that still make a player feel like they are making a difference in the world.

Wealth. Greed really. And what is the point of obtaining loot if I have nothing to spend it on. You think I care if my horse goes .05% faster? Or hey thanks, I bought a dwelling that looks exactly like all of yours (tracked homes in virtual space). What about my wealth makes me feel unique? In LOTRO, I have plenty of coin, but it really doesn't matter. The game is becoming another space where the designers have to glue on entertainment.

What I want to see (HJ, here's the part where you should take heed) is a world that combines the adventure aspects of The Bard's Tale (the original series), wizardry, ultima, might and magic, etc with the puzzles of games like Betrayal at Krondor and NetHack (ahh, Nethack, still one of the best game even after 20 years). I want to see the game designed around a social locale like a Pub, where when you walk in, your fame determines how you are treated.

These are just some thoughts, and I know that in the long run, the game designers will realize that they will have to grow from their current paradigm. I have waited since Zork for it to happen, so I guess I can wait some time longer.

What do you think?

 

[HJ-Navarre]

Agreed.

I'm still having fun in LOTRO, but it is definitely just WoW w/ a facelift.

 

[HJ-Dune Walker]

Zork meets Modern MMORPG.

It is pitch dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

>cast Fireball (Rank 7)

Grue suffers 946 fire damage.
Grue suffers 1210 fire damage.
Grue suffers 881 fire damage.
Grue dies.
You gain 152 experience points. (+76 rested bonus.)

>loot grue

You discover [Broken Sword].

*later*

>sell [Broken Sword]

You sell [Broken Sword] for 1 silver, 47 copper.

>buy [Epic Warhorse]

You do not not have enough gold. (500 gold required.)

Enemy Faction Rogue backstabs you for 2174.
Enemy Faction Rogue eviscerates you for 991.
Enemy Faction Rogue crits you for 606.
You die.
Enemy Faction Rogue laughs.
Enemy Faction Rogue spits on your corpse.
Enemy Faction Rogue dances.

~Dune~

 

[PrestoAdam]

Dune, good Zork rendition, brings back memories. 'Echo' to get the platinum bar

This morning I was trying to imagine what a fun dungeon romp would be like, and immediately I thought of Dragon's Lair, that cartoon-like game that came out a decade or so ago. There was this one part where these swinging pendulums, several in succession, prevented egress into the area beyond. At its core, this obstacle represents a mini-game, and I believe that future MMORPGs will have to master the mini-game to achieve the 'adventure' I was describing.

What I imagine is that in dungeon design, there are around 100 mini-game modules that can be intermixed to create the dungeon experience. A la Nethack, I can imagine some dungeons that randomly connect these modules so that each experience, even to the same dungeon, is different.

And, each mini-game module can have several solutions. The pendulums for instance, can be bashed by the warrior, can be 'blinked' past by the wizard, can be turned off by the lock-picking thief, etc. Another example is a room whose door closes behind the party, noxious gas (hmmm, or water), begins filling the room. An attribute of character class could be holding ones breath, which some species do better than others (but all can increase the skill through use). And if the result of the gas is poisoning, the priest can heal the party, or any player with a potion can use it. So I hope you see where I am going with this.

I am not advocating that no creatures should be killed, only that creature killing should be another module. Oh, and I would like to see creature vs creature psychology. A module could be a room with a red dragon chained to a wall and the module behind it (or to all sides) filled with orcs. Yeah, that dragon hates me, the hero, but red dragons seem to dislike everyone. Lose the chain, and have it go after the orcs. Or cast a charm spell, or have an alchemist throw a potion, on the orcs and have them fight for you. All sorts of possibilities.

What do you think?

 

[Scaledfang]

I've had this conversation with a friend of mine as well.... what i'd like to see is dynamic dungeons. When you enter a dungeon, its random where the traps will be, where the critters will be, and even wether or not the boss will be there for you to kill. I'd also like to see progressive difficulty. The first time I go into a dungeon, its normal, the second time, there are maybe a few more or tougher badguys, or a few more traps, or more deadly traps, or all of the above. And the boss might do something different this time, since he's already faced me once, maybe even run off and try to escape.

Dungeons should also be scalable... If I go in solo, it should scale down to make it possible (altho difficult) with one person... and if i take a raid in there, it should be wave after wave of slaughter and traps.

This applies of course to "instanced" dungeons... as regular non-instanced dungeons would have a very hard time programming this sort of thing. But it would add some very much needed variety and challenge to otherwise boring grinds.

 

[Gate]

At its core, this obstacle represents a mini-game, and I believe that future MMORPGs will have to master the mini-game to achieve the 'adventure' I was describing.
...
What I imagine is that in dungeon design, there are around 100 mini-game modules that can be intermixed to create the dungeon experience. A la Nethack, I can imagine some dungeons that randomly connect these modules so that each experience, even to the same dungeon, is different.
...
And, each mini-game module can have several solutions.

The major problem with minigames is, unless they are supremely well designed and highly varied (not just large amounts of slightly different puzzles), they become drudge work just like everything else... except possibly more annoying. I would personally get fed up very quickly with having to play a minigame to move between dungeon rooms. Not to say that some mini-games aren't wonderful, but they do tend to get old very fast. And when they are forced upon players, they become just another boring, repetitive thing standing between them and their loot. Even if there were 100 different ones, how long would it take before each had been experienced and all could be completed on auto-pilot? Not to mention they would tend to be rp-breaking.

I've had this conversation with a friend of mine as well.... what i'd like to see is dynamic dungeons. When you enter a dungeon, its random where the traps will be, where the critters will be, and even wether or not the boss will be there for you to kill.

Randomized dungeons also tend to get pretty old pretty fast. I've always prefered quality hand-crafted dungeons to randomly generated (but still never very different) dungeons.

I'd also like to see progressive difficulty. The first time I go into a dungeon, its normal, the second time, there are maybe a few more or tougher badguys, or a few more traps, or more deadly traps, or all of the above. And the boss might do something different this time, since he's already faced me once, maybe even run off and try to escape.

But honestly, if it's going to take the game designers that much more effort to create multiple scenarios for the same dungeon, why not just create a whole new dungeon and get a wonderfully new experience out of it? Also, having a boss run off would just be very annoying to me since if I was running that dungeon for a second, third, etc time, it's most likely because I'm there to beat him into next tuesday, not get all the way to the end and go "ah felgercarb, this incarnation learned from his previous death."

Dungeons should also be scalable... If I go in solo, it should scale down to make it possible (altho difficult) with one person... and if i take a raid in there, it should be wave after wave of slaughter and traps.

I agree that this would nice.

 

[HJ-Dezorin]

But honestly, if it's going to take the game designers that much more effort to create multiple scenarios for the same dungeon, why not just create a whole new dungeon and get a wonderfully new experience out of it? Also, having a boss run off would just be very annoying to me since if I was running that dungeon for a second, third, etc time, it's most likely because I'm there to beat him into next tuesday, not get all the way to the end and go "ah felgercarb, this incarnation learned from his previous death."

I agree. And also take into account, it logically makes little sense for a boss to recognize you, since technically you already killed him

Your line of thinking here is on the right track though. Why spend time designing second, third, or fourth encounters for the same dungeon when you could just make new dungeon areas with those encounters for a totally new experience altogether?

Not only is more fun for the players, it's more fun for us poor GMs.

EDIT: Oh, on the point of random dungeons.

I've had the honor to beta test both Hellgate London and Mythos, both games that are taking great advantage of random areas. This works good for D2 like games (like these) where you end up with fixed content, so you use randomization to keep things feeling not so linear all the time. But like D2, you only ever had Act1, Act2, Act3.. etc. The nice part of a streaming content MMO is you get GMs and other types adding content... So, the point ends up a little moot.

I can't see random map layouts making sense in an RP-focused world.

Now I could see monster types and what not being random in fixed areas, but I think everyone pretty much does that? I seem to remember in WoW monster groups were always in the same spot, but there was variation in what you got.

 

[Dirk Gently]

'Lo Presto, long-time-no-post myself. Look the TCO gang up if any of ya's make it to the Firefoot server.

 

[Skyheart]

I agree with the idea of scalable dungeons. Perhaps if you had some dungeons (not all, though, because it would get redundant) that had entirely new areas within the same dungeon open up after you beat it once. That way, you can revisit the same dungeon and get an entirely different experience each time (at least, until you get to the real end of it). Or two nearby dungeons that have an area between them that can only be reached after beating both of them.