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Soapbox: Models for MMO Endgame Progression
bluegeek
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First in a 3-part series of articles from Massively:
http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/12/22/the-soapbox-better-models-for-mmo-endgame-progression-part-one/
Discuss. I'll post links to the other two articles when they come out (I hope!). It will be interesting to see if any ideas relevant to STO come out of this.
The focus of the article is an alternative to raid-style content and it's meant to be constructive. Please keep it on that level. This is about a better STO, not how broken it is or is not right now.
http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/12/22/the-soapbox-better-models-for-mmo-endgame-progression-part-one/
Discuss. I'll post links to the other two articles when they come out (I hope!). It will be interesting to see if any ideas relevant to STO come out of this.
The focus of the article is an alternative to raid-style content and it's meant to be constructive. Please keep it on that level. This is about a better STO, not how broken it is or is not right now.
My views may not represent those of Cryptic Studios or Perfect World Entertainment. You can file a "forums and website" support ticket here
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
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Each faction offers exclusive shinies (like STO's rep system), but you end up pissing off other factions you are opposed to, and if you want their prizes you either have to work to repair your reputation with them (even by betraying the faction you just became BFFs with), or trade your shiny exclusive items to other players for their own.
This type of balance of power I think works for a good alternate endgame for STO. You could work for the Orion Syndicate and get exclusive clothing options, special Orion Disruptors, or special Orion ship consoles and gear, but by doing so you would end up harming your...
Ferengi Alliance reputation! Which could include similar things, but they see the Orion Syndicate as business competitors and your standing with them will consistently lower the more you work against their interests. On the flipside, working against the Ferengi Alliance means increasing your standing with the Orion Syndicate, so there's that.
It's this kind of system that builds a sustainable endgame. You work at your own pace to earn favor with particular factional governments in the Star Trek universe, and if you really want to get all the shinies from all the factions... you have to triple or quadruple-cross your friends several times.
Or you can just sell those rewards on the exchange or trade them to other players, thus making some pocket change for yourself or bypassing the need to betray your favored faction of choice.
Also, from playing ArcheAge, Age of Wushu, and (briefly) EvE Online. I would not mind a 'trade run' type mechanic where you can spend 30-45 minutes doing a Tour of the Galaxy type event with spontaneous enemies spawning randomly (or not at all), with the end goal being to deliver your package to a particular location for EC and dilithium.
This provides a steady income to those who really do not want to fight, but provides a backdrop for spontaneous conflict in which the ship (or ships) in question must defend themselves (as opposed to going out looking for a fight). Bigger convoys or teams mean bigger rewards, and bigger threats.
Maybe they'll get their package without incident, or maybe they will get blown up.
I didn't read the previous article about abandoning raiding, but really its time to do that. Statistically the average player is 35, 40% are female. They work for a living. Your game should cater to these people, they have money, they lack the ability to spend 3 hours in a raid or stay up until 2am for raids.
Designing end games about multihour long sessions that require lots of focus is for kids, great, they can earn stuff and not pay you for doing that, but why are devs catering to them? It never made any sense to me.
Been playing Rift for the last two months and it has some good end game diversity. Multiple currencies exist, STO treats this like a bad thing but its not, you need this. The currencies vary on the content played, often winning 2-3 per content piece, so you aren't focused on reward/time, you are focused on doing what you want to do for that rewards you want to earn.
If I PVP I earn X currency, complete the weekly mission for PVPs and I get a bonus. If I complete open world content I'll get Y and Z, there is a weekly mission for that too. Dungeons and Raids earn uh.. whats after Z currency. PVP gear and raid gear are of similar quality, the open world and crafter gear are definitely lesser (but way easier to get too.)
Excluding the 95% from Raids seems like a bad idea, but I think they are really trying to focus on open world lately.
STO is good in that it doesn't have raids, but its PVE content is a total disaster; ranging from poor design to botched combat mechanics and horribly inconsistant rewards. Since everything revolves around dilithium you just find the most dil/time reward, which invalidates all the content. Why play a romulan mission when all you want is dilithium? Romulan marks are garbage (other than converting them to dil) and its super easy to get end game gear. Perhaps if you wanted to upgrade romulan items you'd need to acquire a lot of romulan marks to upgrade them, instead of just mountains of dilithium.
No matter what you try to fix, it really never will work, because it all boils down to selling power through lockboxs, when you sell power directly you don't need a fun game. In Rift the game has to be fun, otherwise people would just leave, an essential set of built in checks and balances.
Completed Starbase, Embassy, Mine, Spire and No Win Scenario
Nothing to do anymore.
http://dtfleet.com/
Visit our Youtube channel
wouldnt matter, especially if the devs are not endorsing the potential idea. it would help if a dev came on to acknowledge this otherwise while it may of been a good thing to think of it and see what the community can offer, however i cant see the point poking a stick at it if its already dead and cryptic already has their own designs.
im sorry if that isnt terribly constructive but its a valid point.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
For the record that's just with the playerbase. From what I understand the devs were mostly against having multiple currencies that are worthless after you hit a certain level as was the case before when you could level up[ doing the Lt. level exploration cluster and walk away with enough marks to get a decent amount of gear but it was all mk II and you were Lt. CMDR at this point and looking for mk IV gear.
My character Tsin'xing
No production company can keep up to the demand so the answer is to give the game to the players and let them create the content and minimize story to take place in the background.
There is in my opinion no solution to the "end game" design other then that because develops just cant keep up. A lot of companies have come to realize this and are slowly changing their design to be more sandbox and less progression based "end game".
I get why you'd not want multiple low end currencies, but one single currency like dilithium is 10x worse, look at what happens with it, the pressure for it from new players is off the charts. In STO while levelling you don't really earn dilithium, not any amounts that matter anyway. It is all pretty much end game currency, but these rep marks once you get past the timegate are over in days really, there is no reason to come back to the content or try more difficult versions other than to grind more dilithium, bad design at its worst.
Completed Starbase, Embassy, Mine, Spire and No Win Scenario
Nothing to do anymore.
http://dtfleet.com/
Visit our Youtube channel
I play Wot too, and Warthunder, and ocasionally when times allow MWO, but all that games have diferent economic models than STO cause they are mmoshooter that apeal a diferent playerbase (full pvp) STO is a MMORPG wich apeall similar playerbases than other MMORPG like EvE or Wow, or Guild Wars o SWTOR, so the economic model and the kind of items that can make to please their playerbase is wider, cuz there is a lot of pve, sadly STO has discarted the pvp and the pve content is broken, but ¿there is possible to get balance? yes but need a very deep work on rebalancing, not a map, not a system, not a simple issue like the "gambling" with lock boxes, need a new rework of the ground in wich the game is set.
Such undertakings have not only very clear expiration dates, but there is actually absolutely no reason for them to be MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER.
Although the only MMO I've worked on before was Earth & Beyond, even then just as one of the handful of Artists on the project; something that has continued to baffle me since the popularity of World of ******** occurred that no one expected, was that almost every MMO today is not designed to actually be something Massive Multiplayer.
Look I get the idea that people want to be able to play the Traditional "Heroes Journey" RPG with their friends, that's fine... but there is absolutely no need for such a game to be an MMO to work.
You ever wonder why most MMO are expensive to develop, run and expand ... it's because they're designed like Single Player Crafted RPG Experiences, which are some of THE most expensive and time consuming games to develop; as there is less reliance on mechanics over providing a narrative, which as a news flash MOST players actually ignore or skip because there is a disjointed nature between Mechanics, Gameplay and Narrative.
You design a game around the idea of "Complete Task > Earn Reward" and well players will want to do that as efficiently as possible. Story and Cut scenes frankly are little more than an irritating unavoidable aspect regardless how well such things are done (and seriously STO has a decent story compared to other MMORPG, but terrible for the Star Trek Lore and Feel)
Now something to point out is Single Player Games are designed with Start-Middle-End (3 act structures) specifically because they are intended to be limited well crafted experiences that immerse the player through the narrative; as well the Narrative IS the reward. This is directly at odds with the MMO design, as well narrative is shifted to being the reason to beat increased power level enemies X then get a shiny reward at the end.
This is counter-productive, yet STO takes this a step further than that... because not only is the Narrative-Gameplay actually completely at odds with each other, but there is also an attempt at providing a structured open world and 'freedom' from Archetypes that results in the prevailing concept right now of "Give her MORE Power Scotty!" behind every single build that reaffirms the Gameplay-Mechanics; which in STO are also at odds.
Cryptic constantly keep trying to throw more content at the players, with an every increasing "Finish" mark; a key issue with most MMO RPG that follow the 3-Act Design, but they don't have the resources to deliver the massive expansions that Blizzard or Square Enix can; so what STO gets is far more watered down with an increasing waste in resources to create these single one-off experiences... such-as Shuttles, Repelling, Racing, DOTA-style Lane Defence, etc...
There is so much effort and energy thrown in to Quantity over Quality, specifically this idea of trying to continue the Heroes Journey ideal; when really what Cryptic have is a license to one of the biggest fantasy universe in existence. I mean it's setting is the Milky Way FFS, over a Billion possible Star Systems we could explore and experience rooted in real-life Science and Social-Political ideals that aren't easily discussed in polite conversation without people usually getting angry or declaring a jihad.
As it stands there is no "Perfect Solution" as to where STO should go, or what is more likely at this point without some major changes at Cryptic the next 'Star Trek MMO' ... BUT here's the thing while we can always suggest against what is popular in other games for a direction they should take, the fact that every single suggestion I've seen over the past few months have come from a place of Players not Game Designers / Architects.
There is a difference between knowing what you like and enjoy from another game or how other games have handled such situations; and understanding what and why certain mechanics work or even if they have a place within the game you want to make.
/---/
Honestly I don't think Delta Rising was actually a terrible expansion, merely the catalyst for sentiments that have been threatening to overflow for a very long time now; which Cryptic have almost wilfully been ignorant of.
It is obvious that Star Trek Online is not what most players actually want it to be, there is always going to be a small subset who will think the game is perfect as is; Personally I don't think it is a bad game just aimless and unsure what it wants to be... either World of ******** or Eve, which might sound strange to say as it has very little in-common with Eve, right? Yet that's the thing by trying to constantly separate itself through providing versatile fitting, Cryptic have been attempting to make that more open experience.
Cryptic are trapped right now by their unwillingness to accept they're trying to get STO to do things the Engine was never designed to do (ergo countless random bugs, typical for monolithic specialist engines) while at the same time, they are equally as unwilling to accept those limitations and redesign the game to be more Traditional MMO RPG like WOW or TOR; likely because they're concerned they'd lose most of their player base (as those games are frankly better) and they don't have the staff to maintain a reasonable increase of Content that players would expect regularly.
The fact here is anything Cryptic does WILL anger large portions of the player base.
If they are serious about keeping STO going, then they will have to make a tough decision... because this focus on "End Game" is killing the game; they can't keep up; they can't expand upward; they can't expand sideways... they are literally trapped until someone there acts like an adult and does what is best for the future of the GAME not what is best for their Short-Term Financial projections.
Also, interesting discussion so far, been a good read. Especially enjoyed Leyvin and Iconians thoughts.
My character Tsin'xing
Some really great observations in here and I really do predict that the future will be more Dragon's Age style games with Journey-style open world opt-ins. (Heck, Elite Dangerous leans towards that, I think.)
All that said, the WoW model works for several reasons. I've practically got one of my degrees in Campbell. People really are good at pointing out Campbell's Hero's Journey when they see it.
Here's what you don't get typically, even from fairly bright commenters like the Extra Credits guys:
Campbell's rules and observations apply to world mythology (and MAYBE stories in general) on a very broad level, when you zoom all the way out. When you zoom in and look at the details of a story structure, things don't fit the hero's journey as much.
Typical hour long episodic sci-fi follows a 5 act structure similar to the hero's journey. Except it doesn't start in the same place. The story starts after crossing the threshold into the fantastic. It proceeds to make a full loop back around home and then crosses the first threshold AGAIN at the end of a story. (Think of the "Oh, boy" teasers from Quantum Leap or the Enterprise warping off to a new destination at the end of an episode.)
There are variations of the Hero's Journey by genre and by format.
Look at 80s cartoons and you have what I call The Hasbro's Journey. You have an initial status quo of hero vs. villains with colorful sidekicks. The lead hero is sidelined or is transformed and gains new allies with a new setting introduced and generally a spinoff property. The lead villain becomes a secondary threat after having been allowed to devolve into comedy relief. A new villain emerges. This new villain is crazy and more frightening. The hero eventually returns to the original status quo. This is what you get in almost every 80s toy property. G.I. Joe. Transformers. Care Bears. He-Man. Ninja Turtles. ALF. Bend the interpretation a bit and I can apply this to Barbie in the 80s and 90s.
Successful MMOs have their own take on the Hero's Journey and I don't think most designers have a great grasp on it or why or how it works because it isn't how they analyze competitors or view their projects from a budgeting perspective.
I think Gozer probably had a slightly better grasp on elements of this than many at Cryptic.
Sometimes the Hero's Journey in an MMO plays out through encounter design or even over a single boss fight. But a staple of the fantasy MMO that STO is based on is that there is one Hero's Journey which introduces you to a geographical region. This journey propels you into the next zone but there's also generally a secondary journey which involves continued solo activity in a socially visible zone and another which involves a repeated story told through a funhouse dungeon encounter which the player tries to perfect. Bu these three journeys work together and are essential to why an MMO is more cost effective to produce than single player RPGs.
WoW has nailed the execution. But if you simplify that to Campbell's hero's journey and try to copy it, you will falter and enjoy less success because it isn't the normal Hero's Journey. It's modified for the MMO form. Likewise, if you ignore the Hero's Journey and focus on copying mechanical gameplay, you also falter. WoW's success is because of both, which Blizzard developed by really properly analyzing and refining what its competitors did. But you need to both analyze and refine. You can't get so caught up in operations and budgets and systems that you forget to analyze and refine. And it really is a continuous improvement commitment.