What Would Matt Do

I like this entry on Kill Ten Rats (and what a name for a website…wish I would have thought of it. Though I would have used Kobolds. Because Kobolds rock). It goes like this… Support classes aren't fun to play for most people. They are a necessity in a lot of MMORPGs and that's just not right.

Everyone loves these classes. More specifically, everyone loves for someone else to play these classes. My Thermal Corruptor can give you armor, heals, increased damage output, protection against crowd control, and a rez if all else fails. This is great for you, but 2/3 of my powers are completely useless if I solo. Damage output is sexy; damage mitigation is tedious.

This is exactly it. To the tee.

So back to my original point. Support classes that can't stand on their own, are broken. And if your game requires them to go into the bigger parts (raid, dungeons, whatever), your game is broken. Hybrid classes on the other hand:

Hybrid support classes, however, are a hoot. I have written several times of my fondness for the City of Villains class design: everyone has offense and defense, just of different kinds. Give me a tool that lets me solo but gets a force multiplier in groups.

I can't say I'd call CoX the end all be all of class design, but they do do some things right.

In a class system, you should enable players to play both solo and with a group, without one sucking. Every class should have that ability. Make clerics/healers/etc fun to play all the time, not just something someone has to play. It's a problem with most modern MMORPGs. It's a problem that should be solved one of two ways.

1) Either as I suggested, make all class soloable and groupable.

2) Or make all classes viable options in groups by not requiring there to be a tank or a healer in the group to do instances. I can't say I know how this would work for sure, but maybe something like designating a tank and allowing people to share HP or Defense with that person. Or maybe each group, upon creation, will gain a Healer and Tank token (or whatever required classes you have), which will give that personal additional powers. *shrugs* Not sold on either of those, but something needs to be done.

Why does something need to be done? Because MMORPG designers are failing us. Well, that's not true. Society is failing us and MMORPGs are just a reflection of that.

[rant on] 

Consider this, do you know your neighbors? Do you hang out with them? Do you guys watch football or whatever together? Probably not. People these days are less and less social. They'd rather do their thing and not have to go through the process of meeting new people, figuring out new social situations, etc.

Now take MMORPGs. They have to not only overcome the lack of social wanting/skills the average person has these days, they have to do it in a very limited environment. They want people to work together, they want people to meet, they want people to feel connected. That's what brings most people back to MMORPGs, the ability to play with a bajillion people in a virtual world. How do most MMORPGs accomplish this? They require people to group to get through the game. Sure, they offer lots of other things, like half assed friends lists, bare bones guild features and other similar not too well implemented things. But their bread and butter for getting people to work together are groups. Because getting through most of most MMORPGs requires grouping. Can't get around it.

But, what if, instead of requiring people to group by having quests/dungeons/raids/etc that is unpossible alone (though I'm definitely not against these a feature for some of the content, just not all of it above 40…hi WoW), you give players rewards for group together.

I know, it's crazy talk. Don't let the game mechanics of working together get plays more marginally more experience, actively reward them for working together and grouping. Don't tell them they have to, suggest they might because the rewards are so impressive. If you started offering more experience for the longer a group worked together, better damage/healing/defense/etc, easier res abilities, or more/different things, people would be flocking together to group. Couple that with a friends system that didn't suck and you'd be creating a social game, not a game that the social part is the hard part (see any PUG).

[/rant off] 

Side note: I've got more to say about the friends lists. So MANY ideas can be applied to make them work better and not be so retarded manual. They are just lists now, when they could be social networking systems that would drive your gameplay. I'll get back to it later. 

What Would Matt Do: Design the game from the ground up to entice people to play together, not require them too. 

This entry was posted on Friday, December 8th, 2006 at 3:49 pm and is filed under Gaming, Links, Wobblies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.