Maybe a little challenge (My Dream MMO, Part 2)

January 11th, 2008

The grand illusion in roleplaying games (single-player CRPGs, MMORPGs, and even to some extent tabletop RPGs) is that you face greater challenges as your character becomes more powerful. The truth, though, is that the end game content of MMORPGs is almost exactly as challenging as the first few levels, which is to say, “Not very.” In this post, I’ll continue thinking about what would make a dream MMO.

An idealized, perfect video game would present its player with a pleasurable rise and fall of challenge and difficulty. After the initial learning curve, players ought alternately to face challenges that give them a thrill and to enjoy the fruits of meeting said challenges. The fact that different people find different degrees of challenge in a single activity presents designers with one of their great challenges.

As Tobold points out, when a game has a multimillion–dollar budget, its publishers want more than just the praise of a few hardcore aficionados and sage critics. They need customers—and lots of them. Make the game too difficult and too many people will give up.

The converse isn’t actually true (except in the absurd). Making a game too easy will drive hardly anyone away, as long as there are perceived challenges to be met. In an MMO, you can strive to reach the level cap, scheme to get some rare piece of gear, or strive to down the greatest foes (again and again).

Thus, developers opt, time and time again, for easy games with mass appeal. A wise decision. I have some real-life friends, dedicated WoW players, who occasionally find the game’s challenges to be just within their abilities! This leaves gamers like me, who actively enjoy testing their gaming skills, a bit out in the cold. I think, though, that there’s a design solution, not too hard to implement, that would render games fun for a broad audience interested in a low-difficulty game that’s simultaneously satisfying for the more hardcore gamer.

For the most part, MMORPG game goals are achieved through time investment and social engineering. In fact, outside of special encounters designed for groups, the enemies you face at the level cap are just as easy to defeat as the kobolds upon whom you committed genocide back when you were level 2. Probably easier, in fact, because you’ve been granted a greater breadth of tools to deal with enemies. Yes, you advance through levels and watch your statistics climb, but the player skill required for a level 70 character to defeat a level 70 monster is only slightly greater than that required for a level 1 character to defeat a level 1 foe.

The greatest challenge for me in getting to the level cap in WoW, in hitting the cap of various professions, in exploring intriguing instances, was in finding sufficient time.

There are, of course, other reasons to play MMOs than for the challenge. After all, WoW held my interest all the way from level 1 to level 70. But let’s face it, there’s a reason so many WoW players create artificial challenges for themselves. They still want to play the game (because they have friends there, because they’re addicted, because they find the game relaxing and pleasurable even if it’s not altogether interesting).

This lack of challenge doesn’t sit well with everyone. Some turn to PVP (although even the staunchest PVP advocates agree that most MMOs don’t implement it very well). Some simply abandon MMOs.

The solution can be found in the many existing games that let players level-set their own challenge level. Many recent FPS video games do this explicitly, but a great many games, including nonvideo games, scale to meet the skill levels of their players. Two-person strategy games, for instance, allow players to choose opponents who present a pleasurable (not necessarily evenly matched) challenge.

An MMORPG should offer a player hundreds of possible goals. The very visible goals of leveling, improving equipment, and seeing rare content serve the explicit design goal of keeping players happy while they pay monthly subscription fees, but a flatter approach offering even the newest player dozens of goals of varying challenge levels could do just the same.

Instead of rushing players to the leveling treadmill, why not explicitly offer them a choice of activities with different degrees and sorts of challenge?

• Easy: the chance to clear ten rats out of the basement for a modest experience reward
• Moderate: the chance to rescue a villager from angry goblins for more experience and a decent weapon
• Hard: the chance to call out the head of a local gang for more experience and a valuable reputation game
• Nearly (but not quite) impossible: the chance to head off on an difficult overland journey to capture a wild horse which can ultimately be tamed to be a mount, granting no experience reward whatsoever

These are all straightforward adventure quests, of course. A rich game with a fulfilling crafting system, thrilling PVP competition, social goals that foster guild loyalty and teamwork, achievement ladders, and strong exploration and narrative elements could present an even bigger menu to the new character. Each possible path to advancement should present the player with tasks of different challenge for the player.

It’s always a numbers game, of course, but it’s possible to balance activities so that a player who enjoys greater challenge will receive approximately the same reward for time invested as a player who prefers to relax with a series of comparatively easy quests. Since MMO designers have a vested interest in keeping people playing as long as possible, they are hesitant to grant greater advancement rewards to players willing to pursue greater challenges.

Instead of galloping quickly up the one mountain that counts (leveling, in all existing MMOs of note), challenge-oriented players may, for instance, earn prestige items (that horse from questing may have a different look than one purchased from the local vendor), titles, and even access to Easter-egg style content. Taking on a greater challenge may result in more rapid “advancement,” but it doesn’t have to equate to a more rapid consumption of content.

After all, the main reward for taking on more challenging gameplay should be the pleasure of more challenging gameplay itself.

Of course, the question remains: what challenges, exactly, can a game present? What activities can invite a player to use his own skill, rather than the aribtrary number next to his character’s skill, to meet a challenge? I’ll delve into that a bit—and into questions of an alternative system of rewards that doesn’t focus only on power acquisition, into tools to enhance the dying social dimension in MMOs, and the concept of a broad range of advancement paths—in upcoming posts.

For now, I’ll just end where I began: By simply granting players greater choice in the level of difficult of the activities they pursue in game, a dream MMO can maintain mass-market appeal without sacrificing challenging gameplay.

Entry Filed under: Game Design, Massively Multiplayer, RPG