My first industry job was on Asheron's Call 1. It was one of the original "Big Three" MMORPGs, though in terms of subscriptions it was always a distant third fiddle to Everquest and Ultima Online. If I recall correctly, it peaked somewhere between 100-120K subscribers.
Turbine contracted to make a sequel to AC, which failed for many reasons. Those are either obvious as hell and you don't need me to discuss them, or they're confidential and covered by my NDA. I'll say that despite the diligent and often brilliant work of the rank and file employees, the game ended up a big pile of suck. And we'll leave it at that.
What I'd like to talk about are the "magic features" that made the original AC distinct from its contemporaries, and from modern MMGs. They don't make online games like AC any more - we were a startup with virtually no industry experience, building an MMG when there were no other MMGs to copy. If Turbine wanted to build an Asheron's Call 3 that builds on the unique successes of AC1, my recommendations for back-of-box bullet points would be as follows.
Open Landscape
In AC1, you can walk in any direction until you reach the ocean. If you see a mountain, it's virtually guaranteed you can climb it - with no pauses for loading. The landscape was seamless. You'd never see a loading screen unless you used a magic portal to teleport to a distant location. The size of the landscape and its zone-less server architecture stood in sharp contrast to UO's small 2D landscape and EQ's heavy use of server-isolated zones.
This has drawbacks. The largest is that there are no obvious landmarks that delineate changes in content level, nor convenient choke points to reduce the odds of adventurous n00bs blundering out into fields of level 100 mobs (this was particularly harsh in a game that pre-dated color-coded "conning"). The solution I'd pitch would be an expansion of LotRO's pop-up region names. Every time you change to a region with a different spawn level, pop up a name for it. Moreover, color-code the font like a con level - to show the level of the area's content relative to the player.
A more subtle weakness is that freedom is intoxicating to some, and intimidating to others. The newbie areas and major towns should be designed to feel content-dense and "cozy." Hold the newbies' hands until they're comfortable, and aim to get them pushed gently out into the big bad world by level 20 (insert child-rearing metaphor here). Give them a safe-feeling place to go home to, and a recall ability that allows them to teleport there at will. Damion Schubert has given fascinating presentations on "cozy world" design.
"Stumble Upon" Content
AC1 is an Explorer's game. It doesn't have anything like the quest journals that are considered de rigueur in modern MMGs. This adds a lot of problems, but it also added something unique to the game. Our worldbuilding tools allowed anyone with a couple hours of instruction to slap content down on the landscape. Click on an area on the map and warp to it. Nothing there? Place tower, some banderlings, and a chest.
Most of the content in AC1 wasn't mentioned anywhere, or at best was hinted at in tavern rumors. Sometimes we'd place paths of odd stones that led players off a main road to an abandoned tower, a field of bones and angry skeletons, or something similar. There were entire towns that existed "off the map," known only to those who wandered, and spread by word of mouth (or, later, websites). The location of Kara, with its vendors and lifestone bind point, was considered a strategic secret by guilds on the Darktide PvP server.
Modular Dungeon Construction
Closely related to the previous point, AC worldbuilders could quickly construct dungeons out of Lego blocks, then pick textures and decor. This allowed a team of eight to add 2-4 new dungeons to the game each and every month. Moreover, the easy-to-learn system allowed DIY participation within the company. Dungeons were created not only by designers, but by artists, engineers, and community management people.
Monthly Story Content
The previous two points allowed us to maintain an aggressive schedule of free content additions to the game. Early on it was decided -- I don't know by who -- that we'd have a month-to-month story. Every month there would be a marquee quest or two that advanced the plot of the world. Players loved this - every patch day had the anticipatory air of Christmas morning. While we didn't sell as many boxes as EQ's paid expansions, our player retention rate was over 90%.
Random Loot System
AC had a loot system that created random drops "on the fly," using a horrifyingly complex system of tables. We did have quest items, but the randomly generated loot you could get through the treasure system was usually better. Every time you looted a corpse or opened a chest, there was a chance you could strike gold and pull out a random piece of godly gear.
The drawback was MUDflation. If you can get a +113% damage bow from the loot system, no matter how rare, everyone who pulls one will horde it. Eventually there will be a day when everyone has a +113% bow, and you have to add content to challenge that level of equipment. (This is one reason I'm in favor of aggressive item wear systems, but that's another topic for another day.)
To be honest, I prefer crafter-based equipment systems. In the last MMG I designed (a little-known stillborn titled Ninth Domain), I wanted to virtually eliminate loot, replacing the swords you'd normally get as a reward with useless "relic swords" that a crafter could reverse-engineer and construct for the victor. I flirted with the idea of making some loot items quite good, but having them wear out and break in a few hours of use -- essentially making dropped loot an exotic flavor of "power up."
But we're talking about what made AC1 special, and how to replicate it in a hypothetical AC3. There's been a definite trend away from AC1's loot-based equipment economy and towards quest item-based equipment economy. A crafted equipment economy, sadly, has never been tried in more than a half-hearted form.
Swarms
Rather than take the view that mobs of lesser ability were "yard trash" that shouldn't provide any reward, AC1 placed them in large groups, on rapid respawn. This created epic hack-and-slash fights where a handful of players would hold back veritable tides of enemies, and get decent loot and XP for it. I remember watching people wade through swarms of Olthoi or Lugians for a half an hour, then sit back afterward bathed in sweat, breathing heavy, and feeling tremendous satisfaction. Nothing makes you feel epic like a pile of corpses at your feet. If you don't believe me, try playing a Dynasty Warriors game for a half hour. Or, you know, Diablo.
CoX carried the "weak enemy fights" idea forward to the next level with their Minion / Lieutenant / Boss scaling. Tying this back to previous points, I would love to steal CoX's auto-scaling giant monster idea. Imagine if the monthly "plot dungeons" instanced themselves per fellowship (instancing is another tool that didn't exist in 1999), and everything inside auto-scaled. A group of level 10s could have the same chance to advance the monthly plot as a group of level 100s. This was one of my "holy grail" features for Ninth Domain.
Toys!
AC has many items that have no practical value, but are just neat to fiddle with. An equivalent example in LotRO is Ronald Dwale's Pipe, found in Evendim. You can use it once an hour, and it replicates the rarest "pipe smoke" effect in the game. Useless! But cool! Heck, look at LotRO's music and fishing systems. What do they add aside from fun diversions?
I've been playing Animal Crossing a lot lately - it's virtually all "toy" content, but you can play it for hours.
Skills Over Classes? No, Actually
AC1 is, to my recollection, the only major MMORPG that has ever shipped with a skill-based character system. What does that mean? Modern games ask players to pick a role for their character, and hand out abilities based on your class and level. Are you a paladin, tank, healer, space marine, or merchant captain? Level 1, or level 20? It's completely deterministic. One level 60 Burglar is going to look almost exactly like another. (To be fair, LotRO has been trying to get some character variation back in using the traits system. On the other hand, Moria effectively turned the class traits into a few sets of min-maxing sub-classes.)
AC1 gave you a pool of character points, a list of skills with different point values, and let you choose what to train and what to specialize. For you P&P players, it was more a GURPS system than a d20 system. I made a completely gimped desert nomad who specialized in lockpicking, (non-magical) healing, and staff combat. This in a game with few locks, incredibly powerful magic healing, and few enemies weak to bludgeoning...
While I'd like to say that the skill-based character system was a magic point, I don't think it was -- and the reason should be obvious from my example above. A unique point, yes, but not something that kept people playing. It was a detriment to the newbie experience -- to get a character that was most effective at high level, you'd have to do extensive research before you even start to play. If I were to leave skill-based characters in the design, they'd be a feature unlocked once you get a character to the level cap - roughly akin to the Kheldian classes in CoH.
Another thought is that skill-based character systems are notoriously difficult to balance. With classes, you always know what a party of level 60 players can do. With skills, they can bust out some combination of abilities you never saw coming, and break the game wide open.
Turbine contracted to make a sequel to AC, which failed for many reasons. Those are either obvious as hell and you don't need me to discuss them, or they're confidential and covered by my NDA. I'll say that despite the diligent and often brilliant work of the rank and file employees, the game ended up a big pile of suck. And we'll leave it at that.
What I'd like to talk about are the "magic features" that made the original AC distinct from its contemporaries, and from modern MMGs. They don't make online games like AC any more - we were a startup with virtually no industry experience, building an MMG when there were no other MMGs to copy. If Turbine wanted to build an Asheron's Call 3 that builds on the unique successes of AC1, my recommendations for back-of-box bullet points would be as follows.
Open Landscape
In AC1, you can walk in any direction until you reach the ocean. If you see a mountain, it's virtually guaranteed you can climb it - with no pauses for loading. The landscape was seamless. You'd never see a loading screen unless you used a magic portal to teleport to a distant location. The size of the landscape and its zone-less server architecture stood in sharp contrast to UO's small 2D landscape and EQ's heavy use of server-isolated zones.
This has drawbacks. The largest is that there are no obvious landmarks that delineate changes in content level, nor convenient choke points to reduce the odds of adventurous n00bs blundering out into fields of level 100 mobs (this was particularly harsh in a game that pre-dated color-coded "conning"). The solution I'd pitch would be an expansion of LotRO's pop-up region names. Every time you change to a region with a different spawn level, pop up a name for it. Moreover, color-code the font like a con level - to show the level of the area's content relative to the player.
A more subtle weakness is that freedom is intoxicating to some, and intimidating to others. The newbie areas and major towns should be designed to feel content-dense and "cozy." Hold the newbies' hands until they're comfortable, and aim to get them pushed gently out into the big bad world by level 20 (insert child-rearing metaphor here). Give them a safe-feeling place to go home to, and a recall ability that allows them to teleport there at will. Damion Schubert has given fascinating presentations on "cozy world" design.
"Stumble Upon" Content
AC1 is an Explorer's game. It doesn't have anything like the quest journals that are considered de rigueur in modern MMGs. This adds a lot of problems, but it also added something unique to the game. Our worldbuilding tools allowed anyone with a couple hours of instruction to slap content down on the landscape. Click on an area on the map and warp to it. Nothing there? Place tower, some banderlings, and a chest.
Most of the content in AC1 wasn't mentioned anywhere, or at best was hinted at in tavern rumors. Sometimes we'd place paths of odd stones that led players off a main road to an abandoned tower, a field of bones and angry skeletons, or something similar. There were entire towns that existed "off the map," known only to those who wandered, and spread by word of mouth (or, later, websites). The location of Kara, with its vendors and lifestone bind point, was considered a strategic secret by guilds on the Darktide PvP server.
Modular Dungeon Construction
Closely related to the previous point, AC worldbuilders could quickly construct dungeons out of Lego blocks, then pick textures and decor. This allowed a team of eight to add 2-4 new dungeons to the game each and every month. Moreover, the easy-to-learn system allowed DIY participation within the company. Dungeons were created not only by designers, but by artists, engineers, and community management people.
Monthly Story Content
The previous two points allowed us to maintain an aggressive schedule of free content additions to the game. Early on it was decided -- I don't know by who -- that we'd have a month-to-month story. Every month there would be a marquee quest or two that advanced the plot of the world. Players loved this - every patch day had the anticipatory air of Christmas morning. While we didn't sell as many boxes as EQ's paid expansions, our player retention rate was over 90%.
Random Loot System
AC had a loot system that created random drops "on the fly," using a horrifyingly complex system of tables. We did have quest items, but the randomly generated loot you could get through the treasure system was usually better. Every time you looted a corpse or opened a chest, there was a chance you could strike gold and pull out a random piece of godly gear.
The drawback was MUDflation. If you can get a +113% damage bow from the loot system, no matter how rare, everyone who pulls one will horde it. Eventually there will be a day when everyone has a +113% bow, and you have to add content to challenge that level of equipment. (This is one reason I'm in favor of aggressive item wear systems, but that's another topic for another day.)
To be honest, I prefer crafter-based equipment systems. In the last MMG I designed (a little-known stillborn titled Ninth Domain), I wanted to virtually eliminate loot, replacing the swords you'd normally get as a reward with useless "relic swords" that a crafter could reverse-engineer and construct for the victor. I flirted with the idea of making some loot items quite good, but having them wear out and break in a few hours of use -- essentially making dropped loot an exotic flavor of "power up."
But we're talking about what made AC1 special, and how to replicate it in a hypothetical AC3. There's been a definite trend away from AC1's loot-based equipment economy and towards quest item-based equipment economy. A crafted equipment economy, sadly, has never been tried in more than a half-hearted form.
Swarms
Rather than take the view that mobs of lesser ability were "yard trash" that shouldn't provide any reward, AC1 placed them in large groups, on rapid respawn. This created epic hack-and-slash fights where a handful of players would hold back veritable tides of enemies, and get decent loot and XP for it. I remember watching people wade through swarms of Olthoi or Lugians for a half an hour, then sit back afterward bathed in sweat, breathing heavy, and feeling tremendous satisfaction. Nothing makes you feel epic like a pile of corpses at your feet. If you don't believe me, try playing a Dynasty Warriors game for a half hour. Or, you know, Diablo.
CoX carried the "weak enemy fights" idea forward to the next level with their Minion / Lieutenant / Boss scaling. Tying this back to previous points, I would love to steal CoX's auto-scaling giant monster idea. Imagine if the monthly "plot dungeons" instanced themselves per fellowship (instancing is another tool that didn't exist in 1999), and everything inside auto-scaled. A group of level 10s could have the same chance to advance the monthly plot as a group of level 100s. This was one of my "holy grail" features for Ninth Domain.
Toys!
AC has many items that have no practical value, but are just neat to fiddle with. An equivalent example in LotRO is Ronald Dwale's Pipe, found in Evendim. You can use it once an hour, and it replicates the rarest "pipe smoke" effect in the game. Useless! But cool! Heck, look at LotRO's music and fishing systems. What do they add aside from fun diversions?
I've been playing Animal Crossing a lot lately - it's virtually all "toy" content, but you can play it for hours.
Skills Over Classes? No, Actually
AC1 is, to my recollection, the only major MMORPG that has ever shipped with a skill-based character system. What does that mean? Modern games ask players to pick a role for their character, and hand out abilities based on your class and level. Are you a paladin, tank, healer, space marine, or merchant captain? Level 1, or level 20? It's completely deterministic. One level 60 Burglar is going to look almost exactly like another. (To be fair, LotRO has been trying to get some character variation back in using the traits system. On the other hand, Moria effectively turned the class traits into a few sets of min-maxing sub-classes.)
AC1 gave you a pool of character points, a list of skills with different point values, and let you choose what to train and what to specialize. For you P&P players, it was more a GURPS system than a d20 system. I made a completely gimped desert nomad who specialized in lockpicking, (non-magical) healing, and staff combat. This in a game with few locks, incredibly powerful magic healing, and few enemies weak to bludgeoning...
While I'd like to say that the skill-based character system was a magic point, I don't think it was -- and the reason should be obvious from my example above. A unique point, yes, but not something that kept people playing. It was a detriment to the newbie experience -- to get a character that was most effective at high level, you'd have to do extensive research before you even start to play. If I were to leave skill-based characters in the design, they'd be a feature unlocked once you get a character to the level cap - roughly akin to the Kheldian classes in CoH.
Another thought is that skill-based character systems are notoriously difficult to balance. With classes, you always know what a party of level 60 players can do. With skills, they can bust out some combination of abilities you never saw coming, and break the game wide open.
Member actions:
Share this by easily informing your online social networks.
Share this with your friends on Facebook.
Share this with your friends on Twitter.
Share this with your friends on Friendfeed.
Share this with your friends on Tumblr.
Submit this URL to Digg.
Submit this URL to Stumbleupon.
2
Comments
Kaltano said over 3 years ago
Great points, funnily enough it wasn't till reading this that i realized the reason me and my best friend who played AC together had the most fun in WoW as our mage/druid combination using AoEs to kill entire swaths of enemies was because thats what we enjoyed in AC. In fact we both seemed to enjoy things most when we were nearly overwhelmed just barely survived, something that seems to stress out most wow players.
I agree with your points on loot, i always found it kind of sad that random loot was often so much better than quest loot with beautiful art and a rich backstory (I was amazed when i read in game lore about the shadows calling them the lightless and realized the Sword of Lost Light was an empyrean anti-shadow weapon).
I still favor skill-based character systems though, the "solution" to the problems listed i came up with was to use the skills chosen to limit other skills. The gist being you swing a sword at the pell in the drill yard a lot, you aren't spending much time studying to use magic. I also envisioned a more tech tree approach to skills to in a way build classes and give players guidance on ending up with the character they want (sword skill 150 + life magic 75 = paladin as a rough example). Somewhat how it was done in AC2 but skill combinations determine class rather than class determining skill combinations.
I wholeheartedly agree on exploration being key, one of my major complaints about every mmo since AC is the small size of their worlds. It also bothers me when winter rolls around there is no sign of snowfall to be found ever. :-)
I agree with your points on loot, i always found it kind of sad that random loot was often so much better than quest loot with beautiful art and a rich backstory (I was amazed when i read in game lore about the shadows calling them the lightless and realized the Sword of Lost Light was an empyrean anti-shadow weapon).
I still favor skill-based character systems though, the "solution" to the problems listed i came up with was to use the skills chosen to limit other skills. The gist being you swing a sword at the pell in the drill yard a lot, you aren't spending much time studying to use magic. I also envisioned a more tech tree approach to skills to in a way build classes and give players guidance on ending up with the character they want (sword skill 150 + life magic 75 = paladin as a rough example). Somewhat how it was done in AC2 but skill combinations determine class rather than class determining skill combinations.
I wholeheartedly agree on exploration being key, one of my major complaints about every mmo since AC is the small size of their worlds. It also bothers me when winter rolls around there is no sign of snowfall to be found ever. :-)
LinXI-Shou said 6 months ago
Your comments are interesting, especially the history of the game construction. Your comments on the open landscape are out of date. There are now markers to show the borders of the low level hunting areas. By the time you reach these you should have a habit of identifying strange monsters. I find things like color "conning" and popup regions a distraction of little use. A cozy feeling has been supplied in starter areas by free Path Warden armor, and buff bots casting level VII spells. In my opinion it is now too easy to get to level 50. If you start getting killed much before level 100 you are playing very agressively.
AC1 has added quest journals. These are useful, but I am not sure they improve the game. Then there is the Wiikki which provides tremendous amounts of information about the game.
Your comments on dungeon construction were very interesting. I agree the players enjoyed the monthoy updates, and they still do. The game is currently seeing a large proportion of returning and new players.
I would not like an agressive item wear system. AC1 has a few items which decay in 4 to 12 hours. I do not use them. It is just not worth the effort. I do like the tinkering system in the game which allows significant improvement in weapons and equipment.
It would be interesting if you could take poor pieces of equipment from venders and tink them up over time to make them useful as you leveled up.
I very much like the fact that all monsters give some experiance points. On the other hand killing a swarm of monsters such as the Rippers on the Egg Orchard can be a thrill. Rippers are hardly trivial. There are several quests where there are several levels of difficulty for different player skill levels. I doubt the utility of auto scaled dungeous. I personally find them too difficult for my taste. It is no fun when everyone in a fellow is killed.I like the toys idea. There are the pack toys. Now if there were only room to store them.
I find the skill system very attractive. I once had a toonwho was designed to run from Nanto to Hebian-to to buy components for a mage who could not survive the run.I had another characterwho was designed to be a tinker for a manarchy getting his experiance pointsfrom passup. Granted,most fo the toons in AC1 are desighned to maximize an attack skill, but this is no longer necessary. There are a lot of mules. Also it is now possible to rebuild characters to almost any desired skill set. I do not believe skill balancing is important except in Player vs. Player. Trying to balance skill sets has caused much hate and discontent.
By the way, I have played AC1 since November 2000, and never found a better game for me.
AC1 has added quest journals. These are useful, but I am not sure they improve the game. Then there is the Wiikki which provides tremendous amounts of information about the game.
Your comments on dungeon construction were very interesting. I agree the players enjoyed the monthoy updates, and they still do. The game is currently seeing a large proportion of returning and new players.
I would not like an agressive item wear system. AC1 has a few items which decay in 4 to 12 hours. I do not use them. It is just not worth the effort. I do like the tinkering system in the game which allows significant improvement in weapons and equipment.
It would be interesting if you could take poor pieces of equipment from venders and tink them up over time to make them useful as you leveled up.
I very much like the fact that all monsters give some experiance points. On the other hand killing a swarm of monsters such as the Rippers on the Egg Orchard can be a thrill. Rippers are hardly trivial. There are several quests where there are several levels of difficulty for different player skill levels. I doubt the utility of auto scaled dungeous. I personally find them too difficult for my taste. It is no fun when everyone in a fellow is killed.I like the toys idea. There are the pack toys. Now if there were only room to store them.
I find the skill system very attractive. I once had a toonwho was designed to run from Nanto to Hebian-to to buy components for a mage who could not survive the run.I had another characterwho was designed to be a tinker for a manarchy getting his experiance pointsfrom passup. Granted,most fo the toons in AC1 are desighned to maximize an attack skill, but this is no longer necessary. There are a lot of mules. Also it is now possible to rebuild characters to almost any desired skill set. I do not believe skill balancing is important except in Player vs. Player. Trying to balance skill sets has caused much hate and discontent.
By the way, I have played AC1 since November 2000, and never found a better game for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment