Dull Gameplay in MMORPGs :: What's to Blame?

A Critical Analysis of MMORPGs

Published on February 20, 2004 By mittens In PC Gaming

MMORPG's have been the "hot thing" for the last few years. With games like Everquest, Asheron's Call, Dark Age of Camelot and the one that started the MMO* craze: Ultima Online. These are the "old" generation of MMORPG's though. The latest crop's "big name" MMORPGs consists of Final Fantasy XI, Star Wars Galaxies and Ragnarok Online (these are the "main three" of the current crop, in my mind). However, in many minds, my own included, these games lack the "huzzah!" necessary to make them actually fun to play. The question I'm here to analyze, in part one of this topic, is what's at fault for the totally bland crop of MMO* games? Are design issues to blame? Have we simply not reached the level of technology necessary to "pull off" the type of MMORPG that would truly captivate players? Or, is it a mixture of these things?

Before I delve into the guts of this article, though, let's go through some history of the appeal of MMORPGs. If you're reading this, chances are you know what an RPG is (in-fact, you should know what an MMORPG is without my bothering to define it; in order to be of the correct audience for this article), so I won't go through the entire history of how RPGs got popular; and, even if I was, it would just be like this: nerd finds D&D, nerds get together to play D&D, nerds roleplay, nerds find computer games, nerds make D&D computer games, etc.. I just unknowingly described the history of RPGs anyway... The very abridged version, of course.

Anyway, getting back on track, the idea of a computer-based MMORPG is every D&D nerd's dream. All the fun of role-playing, without the necessity of letting the people play with realize that you haven't showered in weeks. Not only did you not have to leave your house, but the idea of the MMO* game would allow you to leave your real life and pretend your a heroic paladin, and share your fantasy with thousands of other nerds.It's a nerd's wettest D&D fantasy come true!

Now, you may ask, how could so many game development companies possibly screw this up? The idea sounds so totally fool-proof! Well, let's go over a few of the main gripes I have with the current batch of MMORPG's:

The idea of a true RPG is being able to imagine a character you want to play as, and make that character come to life before your eyes. This would require that MMORPGs (and MMO* games in general) have a very robust character creation system.

Sometimes, we all just want to play a bit of a game for a quick, say, half-hour, then log off and go back to our regularly scheduled lives. I still have yet to see a SINGLE MMORPG actually let players do this.

When I play an RPG, I expect a sweeping story of betrayal, good vs. evil, epic battles, and more. When I play an MMORPG, what I get is a two paragraph background story, players looking to increase their stats, and five minute battles against rabid squirrels.

In a society, virtual or real, the idea of natural talent, experience, skill, intelligence, strength and reaction time all play a vital role. The typical MMORPG simply forgets about talent, skill and reaction time, and tends to let players focus solely on leveling up their characters to make them more godly in every aspect. If an incredibly gifted player who has an actual life outside the game is only a level 25 warrior comes across a nerd who plays this theoretical game 24/7 has a level 99 wizard, but this nerd has absolutely no skill (just a lot of spare time), he/she can cast "Meteor of Ultimate Death +500" and kill the previously described warrior without the warrior having so much as a chance. There simply is NO balance between time-played and talent/skill in MMORPG's.

This is a small list, to be sure, but I believe it brings up some of the more important complaints many people have about MMORPGs. Now, are the previously listed complaints a problem with design, technology, or both? As it turns out, they are mostly design issues, with the exception of the first point.

Since the first point is the only technology-related criticism I have, I'll go through that first. The goal of an RPG is to take the role of a character that you create. In old-fashioned MUDs, this was not a problem, all you were given was a pen-and-paper stat sheet, and you could imagine your character as whatever the hell you wanted. However, once the idea of a multiplayer RPG came into the realm of 3D graphics (2D graphics didn't have nearly enough detail in the characters to make the necessity to have uber-detailed customization in-place), character models/textures started becoming more and more photorealistic and, as always, players expect more and more photorealism from their games. So, now, in an age where actual photorealism in games is pretty damn close to being a reality. So, what happens when you try to make a photorealistic MMORPG, is that players want to make their character look as much like the one their have invisioned in their mind as possible. Now, what ends up happening, is that a lot of games fall very, very short in this department. Star Wars Galaxies has one of the best character customization components that I have ever seen in a game; whereas Final Fantasy XI has one of the worst. And this ends up having a major impact on a player's immersion in the game.

Next on the list of gripes is the fact that thus far in the MMORPG game genre, there is no game where you can simply log on for a mere half-hour or so, and then logoff and still feel satisfied. MMORPG's cater to the player with hours of time in one time-interval (or the player who can simply find a program to perform a set of actions that will raise his/her stats even more). It takes 10 minutes to get into the game, then you need to perform some maintenance on your character (this isn't too big of a deal), then spend a few minutes to an hour or so just searching for a party to play with. In some games, finding a party is not essential, in others, it's a necessary aspect of play (once you get past level 10 in Final Fantasy XI, you can't play without a party; it's just impossible). This, to me, seems like it totally violates the point of a good game. To me, a good game is a fun distraction while doing more productive things. I like to code (or do homework) for a while, then take a break to play game for relaxation, then get back to work. With an MMORPG, this is just impossible as you need to devote a large chunk of your schedule and just sit down and play for a while. Sometimes this just isn't economical; other times it's just annoying.

Now, it's time to move this discussion into the arena of game design, and how faulty designs are responsible for the lackluster MMORPGs created thus far. Firstly, I'd like to cover one of the biggest gripes I have about the games in the genre thus far: the complete lack of "heroic" activities for players to do, the uncompelling story lines, and a lack of any real distinction between good and evil (or at least, who is good, and who is bad). In every game in the genre thus far, it's all about raising stats to impossible levels, while fighting different-textured variations of the same monster model. Pure joy.

The final point I'd like to address is the total lack of skill that the current crop of MMORPGs require from their players. No matter how skilled you may be at a game (and, let's keep in mind that the current games in the MMO* genre, with the exception of "PlanetSide" due to it's non-RPG nature, require very little or, more commonly, NO skill), some talentless kid with a lot of time on his hands can always beat you with his 10 levels higher warrior. What's the point of putting a lot of time into improving your character, and getting better at the game, if some complete nerd can just annihilate you with his talentless high-stat beast?

The latter point, in particular, is cause for quite the paradox with these types of games though. How can you keep the game an RPG (which tend to be pretty stat-centric), and still require a decent amount of skill/strategy/intelligence in order to be good? Where is the happy medium between purely stat-based games (such as Ragnarok Online and Everquest) and purely skill-based games (most FPSs and action games)? With that in mind, is it even possible to reach a happy medium at all? The answer to this will reside in part two of this series.

Comments

sir spamsalot (Anonymous User)

on Feb 20, 2004

spamin it up

Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:

Richer content, access to many features that are disabled for guests like commenting on the forums.
Access to a great community, with a massive database of many, many areas of interest.
Access to contests & subscription offers like exclusive emails.
It's simple, and FREE!