MMO Diversity, Part 5: Modern Models

Note: This article is primarily about massively multiplayer online rpg's but can be extended to talking about any rpg with a skill/numbers base.

So, I've spoken a bit about some problems that MMO's have, primarily with how their skill tree is developed. I would like to take a walk through some modern MMO's and analyze how they (attempt to) sidestep these issues.

Recap:

The diversity problem in western MMO's is since the classes are role-based how does one customize one's character because all the roles have the same skills (or need to perform the same functions.)

The diversity problem in eastern MMO's is since there's too much customization of character, and too much focused on the choices you make, you have limited skill sets, you become a narrow focused character, and the classes become somewhat hybridized and hard to tell apart.

City of Heroes, NC Soft

Straight from the outset, you are forced to choose your role: Tanker (Melee Defense), Scrapper (Melee DPS), Blaster (Ranged DPS), Support (Heal / Support), Control (Crowd Control).

But then, how does City of Heroes address the customization problem?

1. Appearance is everything: By giving characters full control over how they appear (and thus doing away with all those silly equipment pieces.) they make a very visual impact on players. Players can choose to be anything from super sailor princess to titanic mecha overlord. Everyone thusly can choose to be somewhat unique, as they definitely stand out from the other 9 players wearing full plate mail.

2. Skill SETS: City of Heroes allows you to choose primary and secondary powers, but the crux of the matter is you are only allowed to choose skill SETS, not individual skills. In these skill sets, you can put the utilitarian skills as a bundle with the awesome skill that the player wishes to acquire. In this way, you do manage to give the player the utility spell he needs to fulfill his role and give him the freedom to choose how he wants to play.

3. Utility Sets: If you could only choose 2 very large power sets, then the game would still be hard to balance. City of Heroes addresses this by giving additional Utility Sets to the player, designed to handle problems such as transportation, gathering, evasion, or anything else lacking to the class. Since these are, again sets, they can be bundled with niche skills. In any event, the player does not have to give anything up to acquire these utility skills.

Silk Road Online, Joymax

Silk Road Online is, without a doubt, the single most grindingly boring game on the face of the earth. To give you an idea of what a Silk Road Quest is like, imagine you have to kill literally 5000 chaos demon flowers to get 5% of a level. Then repeat 50 times over.

That's not to say it doesn't have some good ideas. It has a very very good skill system that encourage skill experimentation and innovation.

1. Exponential Skill Improvement Costs: To get a skill from level 1 to level 10, it requires something to the degree of 100 times the skill points it takes to get a skill from level 0 to level 1. In this manner, one *can* get useful utility spells at low levels because the relative value of the utility spell / skill point ratio is far far greater. Imagine that you had a choice between improving weapon damage by 5% or getting a 3% speed increase in stealth, like in Ragnarok Online. Now imagine if that choice, was, instead, a choice between improving weapon damage by 5% or getting a 3% increase in stealth, speed, attack speed, stealing ability, with the ability to cure poison and cast a weak magic defense buff.

2. Limited Infinite Skill Selection: Silk Road characters can choose from every skill in the game potentially. Potentially. Realistically, it's fairly improbable. What they have done is made it so that one must level up a generic passive ability to unlock later and later skills in the trees. One *must* level up these generic passives in order to improve their skills in the tree. Thus, to have skills whose power nears one level, one must focus on one or two trees.

However, you cannot level a skill tree greater than your current level, so there is no incentive to put all your points into a single tree in the hopes of achieving a higher power level. And given that the trees (Weapon based or Magic based) are very synergetic, the optimal choice is to choose two trees.

What this means is that to realistically gain powerful skills, one must divert the majority of their points to two or more trees. Out of the possibility to choose between infinite skill trees, the optimal choice in their system is to choose two or more trees to focus on. Coupled with their exponential skill point improvement costs, this means it is very easy to tell what few trees characters have chosen to become.

3. Micro-gains in skill improvement unlinked to level gain: During the gaining of one level, a character in silk road will gain many hundreds of skill points. In this manner, they encourage experimentation as the character can simply gain a couple of extra skill points in this level to try out skills. It does not in any way shape or form hamper his advancement of his current level to try out new skills. He does not give up anything by trying out a skill besides a little bit of time. He does not lose anything "in the long run" and mistakes feel very cheap. Because, hey, even if that skill was horrible, I only spent 3 skill points on it, and I could get that back in like, a minute.

World of Warcraft, Blizzard

I don't really think I need to go much further than to say World of Warcraft is currently one of the best models of the western mmorpg. It has clearly defined role-based class systems with a heavy influence from dungeons and dragons and MUDs alike. It solves diversity in an interesting way, directly related to their talent tree.

Let me say this: the talent tree is the most obvious/simplest way to combine the western and eastern systems of skill thought.

First off: Every character in WoW gets their class based skills. All of them. They don't get to skip any. Then every character in WoW gets hit by a fully loaded skill tree that modifies their skills. All of them. And they have to spend points in this tree to unlock bonuses in skills.

Imagine an Eastern MMO where you started off with nine points in every skill and the last bit of adjustments you were to make were to add the last polishing skill points to those you wanted to be just a bit better (or get a few more points in those passive skills.) Wow does have one very good system in place though to increase this diversity even more.

1. "Gold Medal Skills" - These are special (powerful) customized skills designed for players who play a very specific way. How does Blizzard know that these players are playing this way? Because they have placed points in those skill trees in a following manner and thus earn the privilege of being able to use that skill.

It's the best case scenario. Some players have skills that other players don't, but they are the ones who can best use these niche skills in the first place or have the best rationale to have this skill.

It is fairly balanced because there is a significant cost to getting them. It also helps distinguish people from each other as even two of the same class has wildly different 'special' abilities. It's kind of like two people playing street fighter that have their own signature moves. Very 'Ken' and 'Ryu' like, in a way. They're both shotoken characters, but they're tweaked just enough so that they're diverse.. but they can still handle the majority of the same situations decently.

That's my brief discussion on MMO Diversity. Granted it was mainly about skill trees, but since MMO's are so reliant on the skills players have to use, talking about the core skill setup defines 50 to 60% of the core gameplay of any MMO. Thus, by carefully planning the skill setup, one can promote or squelch playing diversity.