Welcome back! It's been a long while since I've touched this thing, but dreams don't die quietly.
I should take a moment to reiterate the tired mantra you will all soon come to know and love/loathe: I am not a game designer. This is not an attempt at game design. Well, honestly, it kind of is, but it isn't a serious attempt. I'm fully aware of my lack of qualification in this field, and as a layman, I can only offer a layman's perspective on these issues. What I aspire to bring to the table is a refreshed and deeply considered look at the observations I've made after playing so many of these virtual worlds.
Cool, got that out of the way.
Speaking of an outsider's perspective, from a cursory brush of the MMO fare on the market today, it can be easy to get the opinion that there is something magical about the number three. DAoC taught us to put in three opposed player factions instead of two. Vanguard taught us about it's purported three pillars to game interaction: combat, crafting, and social. GW2 leaves tantalizing hints about the same three pillars to ascendancy in its slightly less linear progression track, though what exactly those pillars are seems a little bit left to mystery. The examples are there in the fundamental architecture of game worlds, if you're interested to look for them.
For my part, I hit upon a mini-epiphany about the number three after long hours spent in newbie zones in countless free trials. As a brief preface to this, you ought to understand that I am a free trial ninja. I've hit level ~15 in every class in more MMO's than I can count on two hands, and if you ever want an interesting education in the initial building blocks of this genre, I could recommend much worse than following in my footsteps. The aforementioned epiphany has to do with a player's ability to pay attention to the game.
HOW MANY SPELLS IS TOO MANY SPELLS FOR A PC?
To put it another way, when does the number of ways a player can interact with his environment become too much and overload him, forcing him into a dwindling spiral of add-ons, macros, database websites, min-maxing, cookie cutter builds, and skill rotations? Now, actually, the sheer number of abilities in a game is not the deciding factor in many of these symptoms, but I think you grasped the scenario I'm trying to convey here.
Imagine you're a level one character in a brand new ex-sizzling MMO. It's got that new MMO smell. You don't know what your first couple of hotkeys do, you don't know what you're going to get when you level up, and finding out is actually pretty compelling. Reference Raph Koster's Theory of Fun in Game Design.
What? I dunno, just google it or something. The day may come when I am responsible enough to do hyperlinks and things. The day may also come when the courage of men fails (but it is not this day).
Anyway, that new MMO smell. By the time you're level 5, you feel like a little badass, don't you? You've got about 4-5 spells of laying waste to things and/or people and you have deduced through practical experience how best to use them together. In your own blessed opinion. Cue the moment 55 levels later when you're reading elitist jerks and your face when you've been Doing It Wrong all this time. But that's not what we're talking about! We're talking about when you're level 5, and shit is still pretty exciting.
If you've ever followed the development of Dungeons and Dragons editions, then the term sweet spot means something to you concerning the level curve. There is a point along this experiential track when the numbers (and stars) align and suddenly everything makes sense. Player damage is on a par with monster health and vice versa. You have enough abilities to pick from that you are happy and engaged while playing, but not so many that you are swamped with choice. A lot of the debate over new editions of DnD in the past few years has been expressly on the point of expanding this sweet spot in the game.
I contend that levels 5-20 constitute a very common sweet spot in most MMO's today. There's a reason people always talk about that sophomore slump, those dreary doldrums that exist somewhere between the starter zone and the endgame. A major focus in WoW's Cataclysm was eliminating this barrier to player progression. I admit I do not have a current subscription to WoW so I cannot attest to the success or failure of the new level design, but I will never forget the time my Paladin was 43 in vanilla and I just... wanted... to vomit.
Pally Pride, by the way. Got a Froglok to 22 in Everquest as well. Man that was something else. Sitting watching my little green hoppy dude wail away on a dangerous... box-thing. I would wait for my health to get as close to zero as I dared before triumphantly smacking my target self and lay on hands buttons.
Take. That.
Your cause is hopeless, mister box. You will never survive the next two hours of my blistering auto attack. Bwa. Ha ha.
Now that was another patented major digression(tm), but actually helped to illustrate my point. We all know what it feels like when there is TOO MUCH going on, and we all have memories of what it felt like when there was TOO LITTLE. Curiously enough, that never seemed to get in Everquest's way (though it certainly got in mine, reroll Necro ftw) and while this has something to do with it being the sole proprietor of 3D PVE focused MMO gameplay on the market at its time, there are other factors to the enjoyment of EQ's virtual world to consider. More on this in later posts.
At the moment however, we are concerned with a sweet spot. Many RPG's face this dilemma. To cut the circumspect bullcrap, allow me to take a stab at what I believe is the magic number in decision making.
Well, I mean, you can guess first, if you really want to.
Wow, you're good. Yes, it's the number three. You have unlocked an achievement! (Where It Counts)
Consider those complicated top DPS rotations. How many frontloaded damage skills are you juggling? How many DOTs are you keeping up? Don't pay attention for a moment to utility spells, procs, and fillers; just look at the big players. How many different discrete Units of Attention do you need to put onto your skill bar at any one time? Is it much more than the number 3?
Consider Bioware's tried and true conversation wheel mechanic. How many choices do you get at each fork in the road? That's an easy one.
Now how about overall strategic planning of your character's growth? How many talent trees? Whoops! Yup, it's that easy. And each new level of talents brings you roughly HOW many choices to make... Yes, you get the idea.
How many people do you need to make a group, bare minimum?
Okay, I believe I've made that point. Bloat, stagnation, and player dissatisfaction occurs when there are too many unclear choices to make at any given moment.
Yet the entire purpose of a level based role playing game is to gradually increase power, difficulty, complexity, and choice.
Indeed, you'd want people to choose their destiny in the ideal virtual world, and yet not to be overwhelmed in the heat of a battlefield.
The system I propose is simple, and derives from simulationist gameplay married to twitch gameplay.
This is a rant for a completely other time, but notice the popularity of FPS games. Do they need gear treadmills? Nowadays some have them, but no they don't need them, the skill of the player determines his status and position in the game world. Why are they so popular? Pointing and clicking is the main combat mechanic. How is that so much more compelling than Tab+1+2+3?
All this, and the new system for MMO combat (and indeed all interaction with targets friendly, alive, dead, or otherwise), in the next post.
Cliffhangers!
