We Can Be Heroes, Just For One Day
Design lessons that spring forth from practical experience are much more memorable than those read in books or preached at you on long-winded blogs. Case in point: Cameron Sorden made an excellent post illustrating how trying to get away from an established paradigm can often reveal what was appealing about that paradigm in the first place.
For me, this touches on one of the differences between virtual worlds and games (yeah, I still think there’s a difference–in design intent if nothing else–and P. Neva agrees with me, so I must be right). In a world simulation, there would be far-reaching consequences for whether you negotiate or attack, just like there would be in real life. In a game, I want to do whatever is the most fun–and much of the time, that involves being a badass and killing stuff.
Being a badass is cool. When the Space Invaders made their first move on my bases, I didn’t want to negotiate a truce; I wanted to blow the hell out of them! MMO combat may get repetitive, but many players still find some measure of satisfaction in it (even while complaining about its dullness).
I’m a big believer that, regardless of the theme of your MMO, you want to make it clear that your players are badasses. Now, that doesn’t just mean one has to be a great fighter; if you’re smart, you’ll also provide the means to be a badass crafter, a badass diplomat (cf. Vanguard’s diplomacy card game), a badass house decorator, a badass cantina dancer, or whatever. Players are not victims at the mercy of the world; they are heroes who actively shape their world’s destiny.
The challenge for the storyteller in an MMO is to give up enough of that destiny to the players for it to be meaningful while still maintaining control over the big threads. MMOs haven’t been very good at doing that. Yet.
[...] We Can Be Heroes, Just for One Day For me, this touches on one of the differences between virtual worlds and games. In a world simulation, there would be far-reaching consequences for whether you negotiate or attack, just like there would be in real life. … I’m a big believer that, regardless of the theme of your MMO [game], you want to make it clear that your players are badasses. [...]
Pretty much agree with you both.
I know one of my players would go for a real world, gritty, death is final, you’re just human type of campaign, but the rest of the party is just there for fun and to have characters that are heroic and kick ass. So, that’s the game we play and my players know that. They know that final death would only be dealt out when they had done something truly stupid and that I’m not there to try and kill them, but just provide a semblance of the possibility of a character dying. Now, it’s not just rush in and kill everything type of gameplay, but they understand that when push comes to shove, combat is what they will be involved in and they enjoy combat in this regard.
Now, if a player suddenly decides to go a diplomatic route rather than going into the pre-planned brawl to settle an argument, I go with it. It’s much easier to ad lib a conversation than it is to create combat statistics and plans out of thin air.
With MMOs, content has been done mostly right so far. You keep your non-combat elements as optional and as their own side games while each of them provide benefits to each other (Vanguard’s diplomacy game can be used to increase various abilities, crafting is used to make items for all types of players, etc.). The focus of the game is still on beating the crud out of things, though I think we could do without having to fight drawn out battles with bats, snakes, armadillos, and the like.