In case you didn’t know, Dungeons and Dragons Online has recently opened up its servers for subscription-free gameplay. Now since I successfully kicked my MMO addiction a couple years ago, I’ve been (intentionally) out of the loop on the topic. But with several of my online acquaintances trying out DDO, I figured I’d give it a shot. Surely I wouldn’t get hooked all over again.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, I’m about to say that I got hooked all over again. And you’re wrong. What I am about to say is that my experience with what is good about DDO (the combat) and what isn’t so good about DDO (everything else) got me to thinking about what I’ve liked and disliked about the various other MMOs I’ve played. And how someone out there can code the MMO that would get me hooked all over again.
Rather than a bulleted list of the pros and cons of each game, I’m going to take the aspects of gameplay that are important to me , and talk for a bit about which games have really done well in this regard, and why. For me anyway.
Well, start with Characters. When I think about this all-important first step in playing a game, two really stand out. Everquest II provided the most options. Many races, many available classes (and subclasses), and many many ways to customize the appearance of your toon. If you’re going to go the standard “I want to create an elven druid” route with characters, you’d do well to give your players as many viable and meaningful options as you can. Of course, you don’t have to go this route at all. EVE-Online is by far the winner in my opinion with its classless character creation. Choices you make at the beginning impact your starting skill-set but after that, any character can train to do anything, given time (more about that in a bit when we talk about advancement).
In the coming days I’ll also be talking about character advancement, crafting, economics, questing, combat, and some other parts of the MMO experience. For now, though, what have I missed? What other games do a great (or terrible) job during the character creation phase?
Great topic!
ReplyDeleteShadowbane, which some think as a very poor example of an MMO, did have a good character creation process. Everything cost 'runes,' so stats, powers, classes, races and all that had starting costs. Very much a build point system.
The neat thing was you could find additional runes in game. You could add these to your existing characters sometimes, or you could use them when making a new character.
Unfortunately, like DDO or other games, some options are just better for playability.
I think you're perhaps over-stating the importance of a varied, complicated initial character creation process. It's unfriendly to more casual players, and can result in a character being destined to be underpowered from the very beginning.
ReplyDeleteShort of an Eve-style system, I prefer progressive class specialisation. For example, you start as a Warrior, with very simple development options, and at level 10 (out of eighty, say) you get a selection of subclasses to branch out to (Blademaster, Barbarian, Lancer, Knight etc.). This is a fairly regular occurrence through the levels. This comes with aesthetic changes, new skill trees and stat modifications.
You end up with a wide variety of potential characters, a more interesting sensation of progression as you actually play.
As a sidenote, I'm fed up of high fantasy MMOs.