Part Three: I'm an O.G.

For me the ultimate MMO experience has not been created. It lies somewhere in between WoW and CoX. I have a list of things I'd do if I was put in a position to develop my own game.

I want a game that uses the latest graphic technology AND has it's own style. I want the world to feel real. Even though CoX has much more advanced graphics and physics engine it lacks style. The world of COX is meant to be modern day metropolis but the buildings are all basic boxes for the most part with simple textures. It gives the game world a cold, sterile, and unimaginitive look. The one zone that does truly feel inspired is actualy another dimension of floating asteroids and alien creatures, but the zone is horrific to explore unless you can Fly and the missions that take place are among the games worst. WoW though the graphics are less advanced looks gorgeous and alive do to great art design. I think one of the most overlooked aspects in CoX is what is refered to as "Quality of Life" issues. Making a game world believable is all in the details. But Cryptic made some extremely poor decisions in that area. The biggest to me is the fact that the water has no depth. For 2 games in which water is such a large part of the outdoor enviroments (CoV takes place in a series of islands!) the fact that you can stand out in the middle of the ocean and the water is 3 feet deep is a huge mistake. Also the constant need to "zone" (the game stops and loads a new zone taking 10-30 seconds) is another one of those constant reminders that this is nothing but a game. WoW streams the entire world and there are only 2 times it stops to load, if you are switching continents or if you are going into an instance dungeon. You can completely lose track of yourself in WoW because you can wander around for hours just exploring new areas and looking for new flight paths. In CoX you go across a 1 mile area to get to the next and you have to stop and load the next zone. It's a constant reminder that this is a game.

It's all about interaction. In CoX the max size of a team is 8 people. But you can do any mission in the game with 8 people and it only makes the mission more rewarding. It's this feature that makes the fact that every mission takes place on a instance worth the annoyance of loading. In WoW the max team size for the core of the game is 5 people and the quests all based on "go kill x number of these creatures" or "go get me this item from this creature" takes place in the open world enviroment. It's very repetitive and it's not team friendly. The number of creatures is not going to expand to allow for the fact that you have 5 people and the rewards you get do not increase to allow everyone on the team to get them. So you end up doing more work for the hope of getting the item you need.

Make the fights more dynamic. Even the simplest missions in CoX can have an epic feel when you have an 8 person team all synergized and working together. In CoX you can control the difficulty of the missions and with a good team you will find yourself taking on critters 2 or 3 levels higher than you. This makes the game much more challenging and fastpaced as you must work together and have a good balance of archetypes to succeed. In WoW the only way to enjoy this kind of battle is to participate in one of the huge raids and those take hours to complete. Even those tend to be very slow and methodical, you can't just charge in and start attacking. It all has to be thought out and one error and your team is wiped out. This makes the game pace slow and lacking in dynamics.

Allow the player to personalize their chartacter as much as possible. Let's face it the main reason for CoX success is the one of a kind character creation tool. You get thousands of customizable options to create your look and none of the choices effect gameplay. You can (and do) spend hours creating characters. It's beyond anything any game offers, even the Sims. In WoW you only have a few basic opitions and then what you look like is controled by what types of clothing you find in-game, purchase, and can actually wear. You want to be a Tauren (cow person) that wears gold armor and has flames coming from your head, too bad. You can't wear armor unless you are an archetype that is allowed to. You want that +5 resistance to Cold Damage and to have all your clothes be Pink, too bad you have to look the way the developers chose to make items with cold resistance. I was often wearing clothes I thought were ugly and not what I wanted to look like simply because the stats on them were what I needed. And the ultimate faux pas the high-end Raid or PvP gear which becomes a necessity makes you look exactly like every other character who has earned it. It's an odd decision that the more powerful you become the more you look like everyone else.

Lastly, don't expand the game when you already have hundreds of bugs to fix. In my entire trip from level 1 to 60 in WoW I never experienced any bugs. The text for missions was always spelled correctly, the powersets never had specific powers that weren't working as intended (not to be confused with needing to be strengthened or nerfed), and most importantly disconnections and client crashes were extremely rare for the majority of players. In CoX this is not the case. There are mispelled words in mission text that go back to the launch of the game. There are powers that are simply broken. There are a high number of small issues that add up to make the game extremely bug ridden. There is also a blessing/curse factor with all the changes each "Issue" brings. It's a ripple effect that has become a painful joke to those of us who have been playing a long time. When a new Issue gets released it is inevitable that the game will be broken in often major ways. There has been problems with sound effects looping until the client crashes since Issue 4, lately characters that transform into other forms have been popping back into looking human even though they aren't at the time. Disconnections, lag, and memory leaks have become huge issues to all players. WoW didn't have any of these types of issues and for good reasons, first Blizzard was an established game company that knew what they were doing from the get go. CoH was Cryptics first game and it's clear they didn't have experience on their side. Secondly, Blizzard focused on making what WoW was better without trying to add new zones, content, powers, physics etc.. at the same time. Cryptic seems to feel the addition of a new powerset or a new zone should distract you from the fact that many other parts of the game still need to be fixed.

So here is what I want. A stable game, that looks good, is extremely stable, and contains both an immerssive world and dynamic battles. It should have great content for both the casual player with an hour to spare and massive battles that require many hours to complete. It should be fun to the single player, but even more fun to team up with many. You should be able to personalize your character the way you want and the Economy and in-game items should be there to enhance the game play while not requiring you to have focus on having to find or buy specific items to get the most out of the game. Oh and one more thing, either develop the game for PvP or PvE play, not both because those are concepts that are exclusive not inclusive.

Posted by John at March 29, 2007 10:35 AM