I thought about something similar when i was looking at someones game on here. Making the numbers into words. for example the strength of a char maybe 0-100, but the player would only see "you are weak" when they check there strength. The player would still want to know there progress.

Its only normal to want to know if you are making progress. If im not making progress whats the point.

Maybe the problem is that a lot of these companies are designing an MMO first, and not the world first?

Maybe the problem is that a lot of players are looking for a good MMO, and not actually interested in the game's world first?

Seems to me that expecting a game to cater to your interests just because you liked a similar game is a bit much to leverage on a developer, and expecting a business to actually make a compelling world with interesting elements and diverse gameplay should be financially rewarded by players, rather than players consistently migrating to every single new startup MMO, rocketing to level cap, then quitting because they ran out of content to grind.

Seems to me the problem is less with the developers, and more with the fact that producing MMOs is risky, expensive, and players, by and large are idiots who won't use their collective buying power responsibly, and would rather have a quality product completely free without giving a single fuss about how the publisher is actually going to fund development.

The culture of gaming has changed, and players are to blame, not publishers.

The Magic Man wrote:

First of all, MMOs are seen as one of the least risky types of games to develop. Need proof?

If you are a major publisher, have a strong marketing budget, and are somehow able to get financial backing to cover the cost of a 5-7 year development cycle before ROI is even possible? Absolutely, they are a sure-fire ROI.

However, for everyone else, the phrase "I want to make an MMO" is almost a death sentence unless you make it free to play from the start, don't segregate the playerbase by region (this is a mistake), keep post-release content development crew to a minimum and hire out of the third world (this is a mistake), continually milk as much money out of players via pay-to-win item malls as possible...

Need I go on?

Simply put, unless you are a front-runner in the industry already, your MMO has next to no chance of actually finding commercial success and meeting ROI without taking strategies that are proven to kill a game's playerbase in under 12 months.

Even major, proven outlets go this route, and utterly wind up destroying their playerbase (See Gpotato's decades-long uberflop RO2.)

And honestly, after seeing what I've seen (I grew up in the golden era of pay-to-play, free-to-win MMOs), I've seen the negative trend in both exposure as well as playerbase that a non-gated community instills in a game. The situation is entirely the fault of the playerbase for not being willing to pony up a reasonable monthly subscription, whilst simultaneously being completely and utterly dissatisfied with every new free-to-play MMO that comes out because of the item malls, because of the horrible community that F2P gives you, and because they want MMOs to launch with the same volume of content as established competitors, without even thinking about the complete lack of ability for a successful business model to produce enough content to maintain their playerbase when attempting to recoup their losses for development of new content without a subscription model.

It's a major problem, and why I'm honestly concerned that the medium will never again be anything even remotely like what MMOs were like when I was an avid, satisfied consumer of them.

The Magic Man wrote:

You actually don't need massive budgets to make MMOs. Take a look at Korea.

That's exactly what I'm saying. There is a formula to low-budget MMOs, and those never last >12 months. Doing the same thing over and over again for the sake of financial ROI in the short term is not a successful business model, and is eventually going to undermine the market, causing the entire industry to suffer. We've seen this repeatedly with gaming. Look at the WWII shooter. Look at the Modern Military Shooter (It's currently getting played out.).

AAA publishers are really hurting right now, and to solve the issue of decreased profit margins, they are cutting developers, not maintaining products, and ultimately following a formulaic model for repeat releases.

Does it work? Does it make money? Absolutely. But I firmly believe it only works in the short run, and will in the long run, do actual damage to the majority of publishers that partake in it.

Look at Zynga. They were wildly popular for their bad practices. But over time, the consumers got fed up with it, and their reputation went into the dog house. Are they still making money? Yeah, but they, each and every year, are hurting their own brand by attempting to expand it.

Their NASDAQ share prices have plummeted by 75% in the last 24 months. They are recovering slightly over the last 12 months, but at $4 a share, they are pretty much a worthless stock at this point. This is majorly bad news for a publicly traded company, and why/how CEOs get fired.

I think we agree, but not about a number of semantic and/or minor issues.


To get off our meta topic, and back onto the actual topic, I'd say that obscuring the levels/stats visually is probably not enough. You are actively going to have to design your gameplay in a manner that makes just playing the game fun, and if you do that, I think regardless of how you show your stats to the player, you'll have a solid game anyway.

It sort of seems to me that levels, at one time were used as a means of stretching out gameplay before studios started getting major teams together to produce a lot of content.

After the level grinding fell out of style, physical obstacles were used as dilation of gameplay duration.

After that fell out of style, travel times.

After that fell out of style, quest progression.

And then WoW came along and made loot tables and gear progression determine your ability to advance moreso than any other factor. Essentially, your ability to advance hinged on your ability to down content quickly, reliably, and to group with people who weren't going to compete with you for gear drops. (This breeds a seriously bad community, IMO.)

So yeah, you might wind up doing some actual research into work/reward cycles in videogames. It might be pretty eye-opening to read about the conflicting perspectives from a marketing and sales perspective vs. a gameplay perspective.

The two just seem to be extremely hard to balance, and that's sort of the central root of the problem I think you are having.

FKI wrote:

I completely agree with the above post. It's pretty much as if everyone in the gaming industry (and gaming isn't the only part of the industry that does this) chooses to produce (whatever they may do) projects solely for the sake of monetization, no matter how terrible, trendy, or lazy it may be, instead of producing a project that's actually good and making money in the process for producing good, effortful work. This way of thinking is constantly watering everyone down to accept terrible and repetitive product. Then when someone actually does make something that has a good concept, it's generally less received compared to the trendy product, or worse, completely overlooked, because it's outside of the stans' comfort zones.

Just my opinion though.

I think what you've said is more than just an opinion, its pretty much the lay of the land right now. Occasionally a breakout product such as minecraft flips the industry on its head in a good way, and we need those moments.

FKI wrote:

I completely agree with the above post. It's pretty much as if everyone in the gaming industry (and gaming isn't the only part of the industry that does this) chooses to produce (whatever they may do) projects solely for the sake of monetization, no matter how terrible, trendy, or lazy it may be, instead of producing a project that's actually good and making money in the process for producing good, effortful work. This way of thinking is constantly watering everyone down to accept terrible and repetitive product. Then when someone actually does make something that has a good concept, it's generally less received compared to the trendy product, or worse, completely overlooked, because it's outside of the stans' comfort zones.

This is marketing 101, though.

Players say they want something different, but ultimately throw a hissy-fit when something is outside of their comfort zone.

You hear it every single day, when people come out of the movies: "Well, that plot was typical and totally predictable."

Why did you buy it on DVD? Why did you hype the movie if it was a predictable story? Why did you support the producer in that endeavor if the product was not satisfactory?

Ultimately, consumers in the west want to have their cake and eat it too. This is most evident in videogame piracy, where consumers pretend it is an act of protest to download a game and not pay for it.

All you are telling producers is, that it's a solid concept, but their price-model needs reworking. (Funny how that translates to MMOs.)

I don't want to pick on producers here at all, or claim the industry is at fault.

TL;DR:

The industry is doing what is profitable, and what is in its own interest. The consumer is not.

The consumer is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting results to vary.

The industry is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting the results to be consistent.

Which one of these fits the definition of insanity?


Consumers often complain that the industry doesn't listen to their wants. They do, they just listen to how you spend your money, and not what you say, because 90% of what consumers say is over-pretentious hogwash intended to make themselves feel smugly self-superior to the people they view beneath them for sharing the same interests they are judging the others for having.

The Magic Man wrote:

Except for small amateur games like you might find on BYOND, every single game ever was made because for the money it could bring in.

That's not true at all. Look back at the history of gaming and the ancient MUDs. When the very first computer games were made, the developers had no idea that there was any profit to be made. Later on, some small businesses (not so small anymore) decided to test out marketing this new idea, and they were very surprised by how well it sold!

This is also very interesting when you think about how BYOND was inspired by the MUDs. The roots go deep, but will the legacy go on?

I think you responded to the wrong person.

You could share with the class. :(

@Topic: Honestly, I only skimmed through this thread and enjoyed the meta/off-topic stuff and such, but to get on topic and straight to the point.

You can't really have a game with out some form of progression in some way even if that progression is your knowledge and understanding of the game itself. So this topic is to be clearly read as "How much display space should be given to stat displays, if at all?"

If you're going to make a RPG that avoids stat displays/numbers that would definitely be interesting but also alienating if done wrong.

Personally I think the idea of say, not having a health bar but instead the screen turning more red around the edges seems interesting. Or say that fireball spell you mentioned slowly increased in potency/casting efficiency as you used it and other spells but the game doesn't tell you this overtly.

From reading these replies, I didn't really notice any suggestions and this dynamic is something I often thought of myself.

You will level up your attributes as you do activities that put strain upon those attributes. Taking this further you can do even more interesting things with a level system. Firstly you need to recognise your player and his playstyle.

for example if you had the following two players:

Conqueror(usually will keep repeating a quest/task untill they complete it)

Wanderer(mostly travels the game world looking for hidden gems or just for the sake of wandering)

it would be more suitable to give them quests based on their style and doing those quests would automagically level up the stats needed to advance further into that particular quest tree.

e.g Conqueror gains +50 strength exp after a small dungeon
Wanderer gains +50 speed exp after an exploratory quest.

Now such a system is interesting because although players have all the choice in the world to do either wandering or conqueror quests, they will pick the one most fun to them; and as such whilst completing their chosen fun quests, the game as a good system corresponds to level up the stats which would benefit their play style the most.

End game content becomes also easier to add, as you now have players with diverse abilities; e.g the Conqueror now has the ability to open ancient dungeons, and the Wanderer can walk across secret passageways. So you would get dungeon parties made up players with different play style who would ultimately feel like their skill and role in the party is a reflection of the time they wasted playing your game and as such will thank you for it and keep playing/ recommending your game.

-my 2c.