Core Principles for MMO-RPG Design

[work in progress, much of this should be in separate ideas, make it shorter, more to the point]

I started this forum because MMO-RPGs are lacking in innovation. We see new games come out every year, but they all seem to follow very similar, overused, and repetitive approaches to creating their worlds and systems.

There are voices out there calling for change, but most of them cling to small details and seem to miss the overall picture: It is not a new combat system, better graphics or a new type of Honor-System that will help us create a better MMO.

Main pain points

• Static content is boring: Nowadays, no MMO-RPG that has a static world, static mobs and static loot tables can make players feel a sense of wonder, surprise or adventure.
• Irrelevant Leveling Process: Players have already learned that no good reward comes before max-level, which turned every MMO-RPG out there into a race to skip the content.
• Role Playing died out: Bad systems allow for a Meta of "best builds" that are copied by everyone, taking out the Role-Playing and the freedom of choice, which should be the core of RPGs.

These are the main pain points we wish to address here.

Why doesn't this work anymore?

These approaches were all made for a time before Youtube, before content creators, when static content was still able to amaze players. A time where game secrets and tips were shared between friends and inside guilds only, which allowed new players to experience the world for the first time, without knowing what could be awaiting behind the next corner, inside the next chest, next dungeon, or next boss.

But nowadays, every corner of a game is published into online guides, where players quickly learn how to max-out their character's. Players who refuse to do that, can't keep up in an MMO environment in which they are left behind and often even ridiculed.

Static content just doesn't work anymore. It doesn't make players feel immersed in a world of adventure anymore.

We believe this doesn't feel epic, we believe this is not fun and we believe this is bad game design.

The objective of an MMO-RPG should be to create adventures in which player decisions are encouraged and rewarded. If certain paths have better rewards than others, players end up limiting their decisions and flocking to the path that offers the best rewards.

Creating systems for an Epic Adventure

To bring back this sense of adventure, we decided to take a long look at some of the classic adventures and tales that inspired RPG's. [The Lord of the Rings], [The Hobbit], and even worlds like [Forgotten Realms] show us heroes exploring worlds where dangers, adventure (and loot) awaits them at every corner. We used these stories to create a list of core principles that shouldn't be broken to give players, as much as possible, the same sense of adventure, danger and wonder, that these wonderful adventures inspired in us all.

These are our Principles, this is our Bible, this is Sandworlds

1. Transparent, welcoming systems that encourage Diversity: Let players pick what they like and don't punish them for it.
2. Exploration at its core: There has to be something fun and rewarding everywhere the player goes and every path the player takes. "Let's go out and see what we can find" instead of "Let's do a predefined content".
3. Promote a welcoming community: Active combating of toxic behavior and systems that punish ill-intentioned gameplay without punishing many for the mistakes of a few.
4. Make Every Zone relevant: Let newbies play in the same areas as high lvl players, so there is a real community.
5. Create Adventures in a Living World: The world should feel alive and questing should feel natural.
6. Give every player a chance to shine: To play as a hero, one must feel like a hero.
7. Creativity > Status Quo: We wish to innovate, always.
8. Gameplay should be fun: Learn from games like Doom, players want to skip the bullshit.

To understand why these points are important, continue reading bellow.

1. Transparent, welcoming systems that encourage Diversity

An ideal RPG allows a player to play his hero the way he wants to. Meta should be avoided at all costs. Avoid secret stats, items, or builds that give players an advantage over others. We believe in combat systems that reward skill, not research.

Most MMO's come up with complex rules for combat, damage, and stats, creating a fog of rules that players can't understand without researching online guides or using tools like DPS meters.

This is very bad for games since it punishes players that are new, and just wish to equip an item they found because it looks cool or because it matches the Role-Playing they wish for their Hero.

Examples of what we wish to avoid:

• [World of Warcraft: Classic] warriors/casters unable to hit enemies without using [(spell) Hit-Rating] items;
• Stats that aren't clear about what they do or how they influence the player or combat ("This item gives me +3 strength, how much damage is that?");
• Rogues have to use daggers;
• Mages have to use staves;
• Mages have to use fire for PvE and frost for PvP;
• X is the best item for class Y in the game;

2. Exploration at its core

Exploration has to be rewarding. Even if a clear goal is set ("Travel to Mordor") the characters should not know what awaits them on the journey. Pen-and-paper RPGs do this very well, but PC games usually fall flat in this aspect. The worlds are predictable, rewards are predictable and exploration isn't rewarded or is only rewarded once.
In typical MMOs, if players travel to the ends of the world and discover some abandoned cave they usually won't find much more than some common enemies, a dull chest, or some boring achievement. But what is their reward, as a hero, for going somewhere no one has gone before? Maybe a chest with irrelevant items, not even an epic fight with some forgotten monster. Rewarding areas get overrun with players while the rest of the world is forgotten. Adventurers that just spam the same dungeon or zone over and over usually make more gold, more XP, and progress more than the player that spent time getting to know the world or heading out with friends without clear goals. These old systems end up punishing players for wanting to go on an adventure and have fun.
This ridiculous structure makes players learn that exploration is bad, going out of your lvl zone is bad, exploring a cave is bad, the only real rewards come from queuing into a dungeon. That is why the open world is dead, it is only there to be farmed for gold or ingredients.

3. Promote a welcoming community

In any online game, the community is everything. We believe in making an active effort into pushing the community in the right direction through active moderation and also by implementing systems that promote and encourage a healthy community.

This does not mean that we expect all players to think in the same way or believe in the same things. However, we believe that a healthy community should be able to express different opinions without derailing into immature or toxic behavior. This includes, but is not limited to:

• Being respectful and inclusive to female gamers;
• Being respectful and inclusive to players of all sexual orientations;
• Not tolerating any form of racism or bigotry;
• Giving players an active role in moderating the community against these types of actions.

4. Make Every Zone relevant [check]

Every Zone should have potential content for most players.
In story adventures, there might be zones, like [The Shire] or [Mordor], but these zones are not completely limited to one level of strength or one type of adventure. In every zone the heroes travel through, they always find a mix of different content, different enemies, and different challenges. Some challenges can be faced head-on, while others have to be avoided.
Most MMOs fail at this, creating zones limited to a certain lvl of power. This creates starting areas that are usually abandoned in later gameplay and, at the same time, doesn't encourage heroes from going out of their comfort zone for better rewards. The heroes have to be afraid of some enemies to give the game a sense of immersion. Think back at the old days of classic MMO-RPG's: when players dared to adventure into a higher-lvl zone and how dangerous it was to be there. But players still did it, looking for hidden rewards, treasure etc. But in practice, there was rarely any advantage of doing so. Most times, not even profession-skills are rewarded since the player's profession-lvl is not high enough for that zone. Most often than not, players would just get killed by enemies that look exactly the same as the ones in other areas, simply because everything in that zone has a higher number attached to it.

5. Create Adventures in a Living World [check]

The world should be dynamic, and have systems that change the world over time based on players actions.
Static mobs standing around places is something that has to be completely removed from games. It is fine to have NPC guards at certain places, but when the players are exploring a forest, a cave, or a zone, there is nothing more boring than seeing enemies from afar and those enemies totally ignoring the players until they get close. The point is not to make a game that is as real as possible, games are meant to be games. But it makes the game super boring when every dungeon is always the same, every zone always the same, and every encounter is repetitive.
As players explore an area they should find a mix of static encounters with randomly/procedurally generated encounters like ambushes or randomly occurring quests.

6. Give every player a chance to shine

Create systems that allow players to have their moment of influence in combat, in groups, in guilds, and in the world. We believe players should have moments where they can outshine other players in a way that makes them proud, but not in ways that makes them keep that stop for so long that it makes the game boring.

• What is the point of landing a huge blow to the boss, if no one in the group notices?
• What is the point of defending the city, if players forget about it 5 mins later?
• What is the point of being a huge hero, if no one recognizes you as such?
  We want to create systems that give players their moment to shine and feel like true heroes.

7. Creativity > Status Quo

We don't care how other games do it. While past experiences and different examples/points of view should always be studied and learned from, we believe that nothing exciting comes from statements like:

• If it ain't broken, don't fix it;
• My favorite game X did it like that;
• Don't try to reinvent the wheel;

If the other games are really good, you should go play those. We are not trying to make a WoW clone, or copy any other MMO that existed before us. There are things, of course, that will have similarities and might even overlap, but we do not believe in dismissing new ideas simply because other people did it differently in the past.

8. Gameplay should be fun

If a system feels like a job, it shouldn't be in a game.
We believe in having different systems in an MMO, but we don't think these systems should ever feel like a chore.

• No complicated math to figure out which weapon would do more damage.
• No unnecessary running back-and-forth to solve simple tasks.
• No moving items through inventory hundreds of times just to make a sale.

Learn from games like Doom (yes, even RPGs can learn one important thing from Doom): whatever it is your players come to your game for, this is what you should focus on delivering. RPGs are meant to be adventure simulators, this should be the main focus: to have an adventure with friends, not to spend hours doing tasks that feel more like chores or repetitive work.

Players should have more time to play the game they came to play, this is key.

Maybe players would listen more to the quest stories if they could spend more time outside with friends, being chased by trolls, or defending a small town that get's attacked by werewolves, right?

It is fine to add side games to a game, as long as those stay optional. Don't force anyone to engage in content they might not like. If the player wishes to play as a big merchant, that is fine. It only becomes a problem when systems are forced upon players that do not wish to engage with that content, or severely punishes the player for not engaging with it. Forcing PvP on PvE players (and vice-versa), forcing merchant duty on adventurers, forcing slayers of dragons to do sub-quests like [Help Mary water her flowers] are all examples of bad RPG game design.

Final Thoughts

Did you like that? Are you, like us, an MMO player that likes to get lost in big open worlds, meet people and run into unexpected adventures? Do you also feel that games like the genre stopped evolving? Then join us!

And like everything on this forum, this is a work in progress. You are welcome to comment with suggestions, our goal is to always improve.