This article is the basics for how to improve the designs of levels in your MMO games. However it can also be applied to the level design of almost any kind of game, so even if you’re not designing an MMO, it is worth reading. The goal of this article is to challenge you to improve the quality of your level designs. It covers a wide variety of different topics. This article is the first part in a series which will hopefully teach you more about some best practices on “level design” in MMO’s.

Many of these ideas also revolve around just learning how to think, how to brainstorm, how to be creative, how to think “outside of the box” and so on…

The Level Design Process

There is no exact right and wrong process for designing a level for an MMO, but I will attempt to help you find a process which works for your team and project. However, utilizing a great process for the level design of an MMO is critical due to their complexity and typical large sized teams. Remember that the design of levels in any game, but especially in an MMO is a TEAM effort, and not something that the design team can do alone. You must involve the entire team at different stages in your design as there are many issues which are VERY technical to account for, as well as art issues, story issues and other things in an MMO to account for.

1. Concept – You must start with an idea. This includes a rough word article which describes what the goals of the level are, what the key gameplay is, the story overview, Quest ideas, ideas for enemies and so on. This article should initially be short, but then it can be expanded to include a lot more information as needed. This article is typically iterated on several-many times.
2. Rough Map – Once the concept text for the level is approved, it is now time to create a rough map. This is typically done in Visio. The idea is to create a very rough map which outlines the key areas of the map, any important buildings or other structures and so on. It can also begin to rough out important boss and enemy locations, important resource locations and such. You will detail this more later…

Because an MMO can have a lot of missions however, this process isn’t as cut and dry. You will need to understand how this will work for you. You may need to create layered maps, where the base world is shown, and then each mission/quest or groups of them are shown as subsequent layers onto of it which you can easily show or hide.

Once a basic map is created, you can also think about optimal player paths, enemy paths and so on. There are many ways to visual it. These maps show some examples. Obviously, some of these maps require very good art skills, and are beyond the quality that you need to create.

1. Concept Level – art level concepts should then be created.
2. Create Asset List – you then need a list of all of the assets needed in a level. This is for art and design, so that you know what will be needed, if it is feasible, and then can schedule it.
3. Create Artwork – The creation of all the custom art for a level must begin early, as it will take some time to concept and complete.
4. Create Rough Map – Once a 2D map of the portal/area is created, it is time to rough out the map in Bigworld. The designers should create the first pass rough level map. This should include all of the really important information and artwork and be to scale. The idea is to get a feeling for how large the map should be and if the things you wanted to do on paper will work in a 3D world. Typically this map uses few textures, and most objects or buildings are just basic geometric shapes.
5. Create Level Art – Once a rough map is in place, the artists should meet with the designers to go over the map in detail in a meeting. And then the artists should begin to model the level/portal.
   1. Note: It is possible for various artists and designers to work on a map simultaneously.
6. Enemy Placement – Designers can begin to place enemies and how they move and behave.
7. Resource Placement – Designers can place all-most of the collectable resources
8. Quest Scripting – While the art is being worked on, designers can begin to script the levels.
9. Focus Testing – Levels should be played by others, and refined.
10. Final Art Polish – artists will then do a final polish of the art, and make sure any design changes are fixed.
11. Testing – make sure the level is bug free.

You will detail this much more in documents to come.

Repetition

It’s hard to talk about level design without talking about how to minimize repetition, which is one of the biggest problems (for me and many) in MMO’s in general. It’s one thing to have a game be a grind, and another to just make it a boring horrible grind which is filled with doing the same thing over and over. A lot of this article will talk about ways to minimize repetition in MMO’s. However, this is a slippery slope, as half of what defines a game as an MMORPG, especially in China, is a game full of grinding and repetition. This is partially due to bad game design from Chinese developers (and many MMO developers outside of China), and partially a technique to save money by minimizing the features and level designs in a game.

Repetition in MMO’s is mostly associated with combat, quests and collecting (crafting). Removing the repetition, while still allowing the game to be an open MMORPG is very difficult. A typical console RPG may only be 10-40 hours long, while an MMO may allow players to play that much each week, for years on end. So, an MMO requires a tremendous amount of content, more than any other game type out there. So, because of the volume of content required, along with other issues, this makes it difficult to create the amount of content which is needed for the game.

So, what ends up happening is you design a bunch of enemies, characters, and other things which you must make into a very long game, while also telling a story. So, you’re stuck with sending people on elaborate quests around a large world (or series of worlds). To break things up, players can also do some crafting, some PVP and a few other things to make the game more interesting and break it up once in awhile. However, the core of the game, especially when leveling, typically revolves around combat, and crafting (for some players).

Now, half the problem is the repetitive nature of combat (see ideas below), while the other problem is the boring quests that you tend to send people on. So how do you change it?

Improving Quests

Half the quests you see in the game are just an excuse to kill things. It’s like a bad martial arts movie. But, this is a necessary evil as part of the way to give players an excuse to fight things. It seems like most games just start off telling the player to first travel to some locations and talk to a bunch of people, giving them some background story and learning basic skills. Then they usually want you to start killing some small animals, often 10-20+ at a time, collecting some items, or just killing them. Often the items you need are randomly dropped, forcing you to killing twice as many as you need, hoping for the right items to drop. Sometimes these quests might be furthering the story, while other times they are just completely random.

Usually, you start off in a small safe area which you have very little risk of being hurt in. Your quests usually take place in the general area you are in for a while, until you get the hang of it. The quests then slowly get you to do the important things you need to know how to do (built in tutorial), and slowly begin to teach you the world and locations of key items. Once you are ready, a quest chain usually takes you to the next major town and into the main portion of the game outside the newbie training area. This formula is usually repeated in most MMO’s.

So, while the idea of having a safe area is good, and slowly teaching the player new things is good, you want to mix it up a lot more. In my mind, you accomplish this in many ways (if you have time). First, you need to improve the act of combat. Combat is very boring, so sending players out to kill the same animal over and over, and make them kill many dozens at a time is not going to be anything less than repetitive.

Making players do long “fetch quests” where they need to move/run for long distances to deliver messages is also super boring. The main advantage of some of the fetch quests is that they can be used to teach players the world and familiarize themselves with it to improve their later gameplay experience.

Having players collect tons of resources is also very boring (in most games), as you must run from one location to another, and then sit there while your character collects, which can take many minutes.

In a perfect world, you would have the time to improve all of these systems and make them more interesting, but in reality, you probably won’t have the time to do nearly enough, and you’ll also be stuck with most of the same game mechanics that all other MMO’s have. The real question then is, what do you do with it, and how can you, as level designers, improve the player experience using mostly the same tools that you’ve always had (as MMO designers), along with maybe a few additional improvements.

Now, before I get off on too much of a rant and brainstorming session, I think it is also good to have a warning and disclaimer. Player, especially Chinese players it seems, like the familiar. So, anytime you’re thinking of deviating from the familiar in any significant way, you need to be cautious, as that could frustrate some players and not be good. However, I think that the changes I am thinking about won’t change the core experience and minute to minute gameplay significantly, so they should be more acceptable. But, you all need to be careful about not changing some things dramatically.

So, that said, how do you actually go about improving the quests? For right now, the experience I am focusing on is the single player level experience, which goes from the new player, until he reaches around level 40-50. This doesn’t mean that some of this isn’t applicable to multiplayer scenarios, group quests, raids and other parts of the game (like PVP), but these haven’t been taken into account (yet).

Improving Combat Quests

The combat quests are generally the first major thing which players get sent out to do. Combat quests need to be fixed in several ways. First, you need to make sure that our combat system is fun. You need to make sure people need some skill and thinking when fighting. You need to offer some types of tactical or strategic gameplay to combat. You need players to be able to utilize a wide arsenal of weapons, a variety of skills, cool spells and weapons with exciting and visually interesting special effects. Players also need to learn how to use a variety of buffs and items right away. This is part of a larger topic about how you should ramp players into the game, which you will talk about more later, but in general, you need to make sure that especially early on, you give the players enough items and skills to have fun and improve the experience.

It’s OK to have some random encounters, where you just are walking through the woods killing any small hapless creature that gets in your way, but overall, the combat experience needs to improve. You don’t need to send players out over and over for hundreds of animals. But, in the same way, you need an excuse for players to kill. So how do you balance this?

Level design has three major aspects to it. You can control: what the map looks like (how it is laid out), where enemies are, and how enemies behave. *Note: For now, let’s assume that new players (levels 1-5 for now) need to have a much easier experience, and that many of these ideas won’t relate to them (yet). So, say you have a large area, which is a grassy area, with some mixed trees which you want players to go on some combat quests in. In a typical MMO, you would place many of our “goals” (let’s say it is a typical wolf you want the player to hunt) in this area. In most MMO’s, The wolves might just be standing still, or playing an idle animation, or might be walking around on a basic path.

Because this is an MMO, you have the problem that there needs to be a constant supply of “goals” which many players can use to accomplish their quests. This means you are usually forced to spawn in new enemies (sometimes fairly rapidly) into these areas, so that players don’t have to wait for a long time to complete their quests. So, this is a minor problem you must be aware of and contend with.

Also, you need to be aware that having all enemies, especially early in the game, be too aggressive and go after the player before he initiates combat with the enemy can be very bad, for several reasons. First, for less skilled players, they are often easily killed and can be frustrated – but you also need to warn them or encourage them out of areas which they aren’t ready to be in yet. Also, you need to be careful that someone doesn’t mess up the entire scenario by running through it. You don’t want someone to accidentally or purposefully run through an area, and to activate all of the enemies in it and then get them all chasing him, causing all sorts of problems, including major game slowdown.

So, let’s take this area full of wolves and think about how you can improve it. First, the wolves don’t have to be totally passive. They could take a little work to kill. Maybe players need to catch them or something as well, besides just needing to kill them. Wolves tend to hunt in packs, so maybe they tend to move around, mostly, together, and if you attack the pack, you must take on all of them. Now, maybe in this case, a pack is 5-6 wolves. A really good player could probably take them on and survive, especially with some planning, but it might be difficult. Now, what if their AI had a little randomness or something in it. So, say the group of wolves is patrolling the area, running around it. Now, there could be some individual wolves randomly around, or there could be an occasional wolf which drops from the pack to do something for a short time, before rejoining it. So, this means that there are some possible targets of opportunity.

So, to kill the wolves, players might be able to get a few with a sniper rifle, as they are dumb and don’t come after you unless you are within range of them, but sniper rifle ammo is expensive and hard to get (early on), and maybe trying to snipe a moving target is a lot more difficult, especially when you have low skills. So, players can attack individuals or the pack now, depending on the difficulty they want. Now, obviously, there are also 4 main types of players, and these tactics need to work for everyone, which is another difficult dilemma. However, what else could you do to make this more interesting?

Players might have traps to try and catch wolves, but this may require a little skill and be more dangerous. They might be able to buy wolf bait, which when dropped, attracts a (single) wolf from some small distance, and makes it stop to eat it. This may be used for a trap, or to isolate a wolf for easier killing. Maybe there is a hazard in the environment that you want to lure them close to and then knock them into. Now, too add difficulty, wolves might howl after a short time, which calls their friends, so players must make sure they have the wolf properly isolated, so they can get away before his friends show up, or they must make sure their attacks are good and they can kill the wolf fast enough that he can’t raise an alarm. Or, maybe after you kill a few wolves, they change their patterns (this is more difficult in an MMO). Maybe there are some soldiers patrolling the area also, and they are actually the owners of the wolves, and if you are caught killing any, they will attack you also. Maybe the wolves are more scared, and smell you, and actually try to move away and avoid you. Maybe there are other things in the environment which you need to watch out for (like deadly killer bees), which you need to avoid while in the area hunting the wolves.

You get the idea. You don’t need to do a lot, but just adding one or two special things can make hunting the wolves far more interesting. Most of these same ideas, and many more could be applied to other enemies. You might have an enemy that can fly and only occasionally lands, so you must figure out how to sneak up on it, you might have an elusive enemy that tends to run away and hide, and which you maybe need to track (this might be hard to do in an MMO), you might have some intelligent enemies that use combined arms (see below), or which try to trap you, or lure you into more dangerous areas.

You have to remember that typically you are designing an enemy to be attacked by a similarly leveled player. A level 20 player knows he shouldn’t attack a level 30 enemy alone, and should hesitate to even attack a level 22 enemy. However, while attacking a level 10 enemy may be really easy, the rewards are often so minimal, that players will stop bothering to do it. So, it’s important that you understand what level of player is going to be doing the quest generally, and figure out how to maximize the fun for his level of character and the possible gear and skills that he has as well. Again, this is more difficult in an MMO that has so many different levels of possible players, but there is still a lot you can do to improve the combat.

So, in the end, you need to think about how to place an enemy, where to place him, how aggressive to make him, whether to have him moving randomly or patrolling, whether to be awake or asleep, whether to allow them to call in reinforcements, how far they can chase you, and many other factors when designing your enemies and trying to make them more interesting.

Diversifying Combat

The second trick to making combat more interesting, is to just diversify it. Instead of just saying to kill 20 wolves, why not say they need 5 of this and 5 of that, making players do more.

However, what also needs to be done is to come up with other types of quests which need to be done, where the combat is required, so it doesn’t feel like you are just hunting all the time. For example, maybe you need to give something to someone who is hiding in a cabin, but scared to come out because it is surrounded by the wolves, or a mean ghost is by his place or something. So, if you make it safe, he will open his door and come out for a few seconds. So, maybe you had to kill 10 wolves, but as part of a larger story and quest, it is more interesting and a little more diverse if the combat is part of some additional scenario – which is probably not too hard to script, and could even contribute to the story.

Some of this could be ongoing. Maybe the guy in the woods is a trainer, so each time you talk to him, there are things he needs done before he will come out and train you.

Add some additional challenge

Maybe there are ways for some NPC’s to make it more challenging, interesting and diverse for players. For example, maybe they need the wolves marked with tracking devices as part of a study (they are scientists), so they give you a special dart gun that fires tracking darts. Players must get close to use it, and can’t hurt any wolves, making it a little different. There are many ways which if you think about it a little, you can make some more interesting quest objectives, but also diversify the gameplay as well.

You could also add some bonus objectives. Add some rush orders, as a secondary objective, which won’t cause total failure if you don’t do it. For example, add a time limit, which the quest must be done in, or a bonus for additional items also brought in, bonuses for bringing a captured and alive specimen to them, or other things which make players use different skills. You could even have quests where you need to find the 10 injured wolves and heal them, instead of kill them. There are many ways to make the act of “hunting” more interesting and diverse.

Randomization

In a perfect world, adding some randomness is good. One of the things that makes many MMO’s so boring and repetitive is that you must always do the same thing. Every time you come into an area it is the same, every time you run a dungeon raid it is the same and so on. Being able to diversify this some, and add some random changes to an area could also be a major way to make it more interesting. It will help keep some players on their toes. This is especially true for instances, where you can spawn any creatures in it, as the player (and maybe his group) are alone in it. So, you need to talk and think more about how to randomize everything in the game to some small extent, just like how you often randomize loot drops already.

Create Variety in Enemies

You should be creating a TON of different enemies which are just variants of our base enemies. So, if you must first go and hunt the grey wolves, then when you return, and they give you another quest, don’t have them hunt more grey wolves, let them now hunt the black wolf, or the blood wolf or any other variation you can make. Even if only the name and some stats are changed, this is OK. Best case, tint the enemy a new color. Either way, there are many ways to continually make enemies more challenging.

In many cases, maybe the designer only places a wolf, and the game will determine what kind of wolves it is based on the character levels of the instance, or who are in the area. So, in some cases, there may be a mix of wolves, with different attributes, and maybe some different abilities. Players may need to kill X# of them, but can choose which to go after, as the tougher ones yield more XP or rewards, but are obviously more dangerous. This could add a lot of variety. So, using the pack analogy from before, if you say have 3 packs of wolves running an area, instead of them all being the same, maybe each pack is a different type.

*Note: These variants should be VERY easy to create, as our system should hopefully support inheritance.

Spawners

Another way to add some interest and complexity is to create a variety of “spawners”. Most MMO’s traditionally just teleport new enemies onto the map as needed. This is an OK solution, but can have its downside, as there is no tactical advantage. As an additional way to bring enemies onto a map, you could have a variety of objects which have an on/off state (normal or destroyed), which spawn enemies when they are turned on. So, for example, a small cave could be a place which spawns wolves. Players can’t enter the caves, but wolves will run out of it at some frequency. So, it would feel a little more realistic.

The advantage of an enemy spawner however is that it continues to spawn while on, but can be turned off (destroyed temporarily) by players. Where this can come into play for example is that there might be some resource piles in an area which you need to harvest, but you can’t because there are aggressive enemies around. So, players must destroy the spawner, which buys them some time to harvest, until it is fixed and starts spawning again.

Some examples of spawners might be things like: cave, hole in the ground, door, beehive, ant hill, bird nest, bunker, tent, and so on. Players can destroy a spawner by attacking it. It will then close for a time, before it reopens.

In general combat, a spawner can also offer some tactical choices. Say you need to kill a fairly large and nasty enemy, but there are lots of small enemies around, and being spawned by a spawner. Players would then have to decide if they should just keep focusing on the big target, or if they should try and take out the spawners, so that the small annoying enemies don’t harass them.

In ratchet and Clank, you used a variety of small enemies in conjunction with large enemies all the time. The small enemies aren’t horribly dangerous, but do lots of little damage, and make you keep moving. Typically many of your normal weapons don’t work on them. Even your normal melee attack went over their heads, forcing you to use a special downward attack to kill them. This added some much needed interest for players, as they try to deal with larger enemies, and had to worry about where they moved and micro-manage some of the smaller enemies at the same time.

Enemy Introduction

Enemies must come from somewhere. How enemies come into an area can add a lot of interest. Players don’t need to see all enemies at all times. In some cases, it may make sense for some enemies to be out and about, but in some cases, surprise is also your friend (and it helps game performance).

So, besides spawners, it can be interesting for enemies to enter the world in exciting and unpredictable ways. This is partially an enemy design problem, but is applied to level design too. So, basically, are your enemies just standing there, or is there ways for them to enter the scene in more interesting ways? Can the enemies fly in, drop from a tree, get dropped off by a vehicle, parachute in, jump over a wall, or something less predictable? Can some enemies magically summon other enemies or minions? There are many ways to do this.

Having some additional ways to bring enemies into an area serves several purposes. First, it cuts down on how many visible and active enemies there are at a time, so if a player is just running through an area, it is less intensive. Second, it allows you to keep players on their toes, as they may enter an area and not know for sure how dangerous it is. As long as you make it possible to escape and don’t always crush the player, it is ok. If needed, you can always make sure there is a hint about what enemies will spawn in the area over time.

Using enemy introductions, you could also setup all kinds of traps. Players may think something is safe for example, and go to investigate something and then get suddenly jumped by enemies. So, it would allow the level designers to create some interesting scenarios.

Many enemy intros may be caused by the player doing something in the level. They may trigger an alarm, attack an enemy that raises an alarm or cause the spawning to occur in some way. These could be from an enemy guard seeing you, a pressure plate, a laser, from being heard or almost anything you wanted. There are no real restrictions. However, if players can avoid the alarms with some skills or abilities, that makes it even better. You don’t want to make a platforming game, but allowing players to jump over some stuff or to do something which doesn’t let the alarm be raised would be really nice.

Improving Quests

Quests Overview

You will create more thorough documents on exactly how levels and quests are created in the game. But, in theory, once you have your terrain created, you can begin to place quests. In stating the obvious, a quest is found by the player and he accepts it, and then the player must complete the quest. This may be by killing something, talking to someone, going somewhere, finding something or doing many other things. Once a quest is finished, players will either then be immediately rewarded, or they will need to return somewhere and turn in the quest task or item that the quest is about. In many cases, player return to the original giver of the quest to complete it, but they can be told to go somewhere else.

Quests are typically given to you by an NPC in the world, but they could come to the player in many different ways besides talking to an NPC. There are also other common systems in MMO’s like Quest Bulletin Boards where players can find quests.

Quests may also be part of a “Quest Chain”, which is a series of quests which are all linked together. Players will typically get a small reward for completing each part of a quest chain, and then a large reward for completing the entire chain.

Once a quest is completed, players receive some XP, Items or other rewards (besides those they earned along the way). Players may even occasionally get to choose one of several possible rewards. If players die, they can restart the quest they are on.

Random Quests

It may also be possible to create a system of semi-random quests. Maybe randomized quests come from the “job” boards and not from NPC’s. These quests may be more mundane and not part of the storyline, but just provide additional grinding opportunities and rewards for players. You need to determine how hard it would be to create some very random missions, where you can send players on a wider assortment of quests.

Types of Quests

• Individual Quests are given out by:
  • NPC’s
  • Guilds
  • With some items
  • In treasure chests
  • On bulletin Boards
  • And other places in the game itself.
• “Team Quests”
  • These are social quests that you must do with 2 people, ie yourself (the giver) and the person who asks. These quests get you to work together, and lead to being much better friends and bigger rewards, without the complexity of trying to put groups together.
• “Group Quests”
  • Like a team quest, but can have any number of people on them.
  • Note: how do you notify or encourage some groups to be of a minimum size?
• Guild Quests
  • Similar to Group quests, but must be done with your guild.
• Chain Quests
  • Are a series of quests linked together with a common theme.

Improving Quest Types

So making combat quests fun is only part of the battle for improving the grinding of MMO’s. It is also important that the quests themselves are more fun and interesting. This can be most easily achieve through the use of diversity in the quests.

Multiple Quest Paths

As a general rule of thumb, players should have some options in which missions they do. This doesn’t mean that a ton of missions should be optional, but players shouldn’t have to follow a linear path either. As much as possible, players need to have a lot of options as far as which missions to do first. So, there should hopefully be a series of quest chains at any one time which players can do. On top of that, players will have the option to explore, collect, craft and eventually even fight in PVP battles and other things to break things up.

From a design perspective, you have to think about each quests or chain as a node. There is a core path of required missions that take you from the start of the game, until you reach maximum level (typically). Then, at a smaller level, each portal (world) also has a start and a finish, with each quest being a node. The question is, how linear are each of these paths.

Along each path there are nodes which players must get through, which act as a sort of gate.

this is a simplified quest node layout for a level. The player’s ultimate goal is to go from Quests 1-17. However, in this basic example, Quests 7 & 11 are “gates” which the player must go through. In the case of gate 7, the player must accomplish quests 2-6 in order to get the chance to do Quest 7. So, the idea is that in this case, players can do Quests 2-6 in any order.

Now, you could also do something where players must only complete say 4/5 of the quests, giving players some options. You could also have some optional missions which aren’t part of the main string of quests, but which allow players to properly level up if they choose to skip a optional Quest.

The option to this kind of quest structure is having say Quest 1 be the start, and 17 be the end, but having quests 2-16 be able to be completed in almost any order. In this model however, it doesn’t account necessarily for the fact that players need to progress their level as they go. So, for example, if there are 10 worlds in the game, and the player must go from level 1-50 in the game, then you can assume that this world and series of quests should roughly advance the player 5 levels, as it is roughly 10% of the game (not counting other ways to earn XP). So, let’s assume right now (to make it easy) that there are 20 total quests in the world, then this means that the player should roughly advance a character level every 4 quests he accomplishes.

This progression is important to understand. This can be the most difficult part of level design. In an RPG, players want freedom and to feel that their fate is in their own hands. In reality, while the games often feel very open, this is really an illusion of freedom. Yes, players can choose to progress very slowly and just grind on doing non quest related stuff, but this may (will) get quickly boring.

Players are somewhat stuck if they stop and think about it. If players aren’t following quests, then they aren’t leveling very quickly in most games. Players can only kill enemies which are a few levels (at most) above them, so this means that many areas are far too dangerous for them to truly venture into. Areas which they started in, or have already done the majority of quests in, may be too simple or boring to go back into. Also, typically, players stop gaining any or much XP from enemies after they kill a lot of them, so there is a point of diminishing return in areas which are far below your level. This means that there are really only one or a few areas of the game which players can safely wander in and combat enemies. So, in the end, players also need to stay in areas designed for their level of character, even though they think they can go anywhere.

However, in some cases, if a player is maybe out collecting resources, it may be more possible for them to “sneak” through some higher level areas and avoid the fights and just collect stuff. This might allow them to visit some areas they shouldn’t necessarily be in. But, it gives them more sense of freedom. Of course, there will be other things players can do, like socialize.

As a side note, the illusion of freedom in MMO’s is a funny thing. You would think that with millions of different possible combinations of clothing, armor, weapons, different character classes and skill trees and such that people would have much freedom to be whatever they want. However, what ends up happening is that people figure out the best combinations of things, and quickly realizes that these are what everyone who is good should be using. So, in the end, a ton of the players end up even wearing the same stuff (at each level) – assuming they can afford it. Many guilds in WOW, before they will accept you to go on a raid with them will actually demand to see your armor and weapons, to see if you are good enough. My kids got kicked out of their guild because they found some armor they liked, which looked cool, but wasn’t as good as some other stuff, and the other kids kicked them out for refusing to wear the slightly better armor. So, in a game with so many options, it is amazing at the uniformity that is imposed at so many levels.

Designing multi-level areas for replayability / revisiting / reuse

When designing your maps, you also need to think more about the quest layouts for each of them. For example, does the player go to a portal world, and then complete all-most quests in it, before moving to another, or does he go to a world, do a few quests and then go to another world?

You can probably assume that after a few quests, if not after every major quest, players will probably want or need to return to a town or the main city in order to sell stuff, rearm, heal, and socialize and so on. So, if this is the case, it isn’t too much harder or horribly inconvenient for you to allow or force players to travel to many different portals and between them more often.

Typically most MMO’s create a lot of worlds that are primarily designed to only be playable by a small range of character levels. They may not stop you from going to harder areas, but each map and area is there to serve a purpose.

So, since you are going to ship initially with less areas/content than many larger MMO’s (like WOW), you need to make sure you are maximizing our reuse of content, and especially portal worlds. You can’t afford to have players go to a world, finish some quests and then never return to the area. So, as player’s progress in the world, they need to gain new items, skills and abilities which give them reasons to return to areas.

So, within a map, a player may only initially be able to get to most of the areas, but some areas may require something special to get you into some areas. These could be things like: Special movement abilities: flying, teleportation, swimming, climbing and so on. So, some areas are physically impossible to get to at lower levels. These new abilities let players get to some new areas which might have some special loot, special resources or other things you would want at a higher level.

Some areas may also be too dangerous for lower level players to safely go into, which helps keep them out of areas they should not be in yet. Other areas may need a special key or security clearance to access. Other areas may have other atmospheric limitations, like I talked about earlier.

So, besides not having physical access to some of the areas, and wanting to return to get something from those areas, there are other things which can draw players back into levels later in the game. Getting new weapons may suddenly allow you to hunt new creatures you couldn’t touch before. For example, new rifles that let you hunt some flying creatures which are new in the area would bring people back to an area to hunt them. New sensors might allow you to now see ghosts in a level and new weapons will allow you to capture them. New tools and scanners may help you find and harvest new resources that you had previously been unable to access.

There are a wide variety of ways which you can use to draw players back into an area several times (ok, many times) in the game, besides just giving them more quests to go back there and do the same thing they did before.

So how would this work?

So, imagine the above map is a portal world. The small grey circles might represent high level areas which are dangerous or difficult to get into. The larger circles could represent areas where advanced resources may be contained, or where some new enemies might exist once you can access them.

These new areas need to be worked into the original design, and properly thought out. You not only need to give players a reason to come back, but make sure it doesn’t confuse them to have these things in the levels earlier in the game. So, whenever possible, you should make sure the things you will return for may not distract you too much early on and players should know to return later.

These later areas which open up could also include some additional NPC’s with additional quests in them.

A good reference for this kind of level design are the Ratchet and Clank games for Playstation (PS3). These have some applicable ideas for how levels are designed, amongst other things.

Quest Types

• You need to have variety of “quest buckets” which or category of quests (which is expandable) for players to go on. Ideas might include:
  • Military
  • Espionage
  • Exploration
  • Diplomatic
  • Scientific
  • Trading
  • “Social”
  • “Collection”
  • “Creation”
• So, when players are looking for quests, managing their quests and so on, each quest should belong to one of these categories. This will make them easier to manage.
• Quests will take place with a lot of conditions like:
  • Where to go
  • Who to do it to/with
  • What to do
  • When to do it, or how long you have
  • And maybe more…

  Quest Verbs
  

  The types of quests might include things like:
  

  • Military
    • Kill “X”
    • Slaughter “X”
    • Exterminate “X”
    • Immobilize “X”
    • Destroy “X”
    • Assassinate “X”
    • Defend “X”
    • Escape “X”
    • Neutralize “X”
    • Secure Location “X”
    • Capture “X”
    • Rescue “X”
    • Fortify “X”
    • Defeat “X”
    • Save “X”
  • Adventure
    • Save “X”
    • Find Treasure “X”
    • Locate “X”
    • Uncover Secret “X”
    • Unlock “X”
    • Solve Puzzle “X”
    • Rescue “X”
    • Find “X”
    • Collect “X”
    • Trap “X”
  • Espionage
    • Uncover “X”
    • Locate “X”
    • Steal “X”
    • Access Information “X”
    • Steal Resources “X”
    • Infiltrate “X”
    • Sabotage “X”
    • Sneak into “X”
    • Hack “X”
    • Bribe “X”
  • Exploration
    • Travel to “X”
    • Visit “X”
    • Find “X”
    • Locate “X”
    • Investigate “X”
    • Transport “X”
    • Discover Path “X”
    • Discover Location “X”
    • Discover “X”
  • Diplomatic
    • Convince “X”
    • Talk to “X”
    • Carry Item to location “X”
    • Cure “X”
    • Find “X” Help
    • Protect “X”
    • Escort “X”
    • Transport “X”
    • Create Guild “X”
    • Negotiate “X”
  • Scientific
    • Find Specimen “X”
    • Take Picture of “X”
    • Take Reading of “X”
    • Discover “X”
    • Detect “X”
    • Capture Specimen of “X”
    • Eradicate “X”
    • Observe “X”
    • Experiment with “X”
    • Cure “X”
    • Repair “X”
  • Trading
    • Buy Object “X”
    • Buy Shard “X”
    • But Property “X”
    • Find “X”
    • Trade “X”
    • Steal “X”
    • Make “X” Money
    • Collect “X”
  • “Social”
    • Talk to “X”
    • Give Missions to “X”
    • Talk about “X”
    • Deliver message to “X”
    • Join “X”
    • Throw Party “X”
    • Invite People to event “X”
    • Make Friend “X”
    • Teach “X”
    • Dance for “X”
    • Convince “X”
  • Character
    • Gain Level “X”
    • Gain Skill “X”
    • Gain Fame “X”
    • Join “X”
    • Gain Job “X”
    • Gain Stats “X”
  • “Creation”
    • Build “X”
    • Create “X”
    • Modify “X”
    • Wear “X”
    • Craft “X”

Improving Combat

• How can you make combat more interesting?
• How do you make solo combat more diverse and less repetitive?
• You also need to make sure that players aren’t frustrated by getting their ass kicked by enemies:
  • Players need to easily recognize when a monster or area is going to be too dangerous.
  • This should include using level design techniques like:
    • Keeping higher level creatures in separate areas which are contained or require some skill to get into.
  • Low level enemies (probably levels 1-5) don’t attack unless players attack them. Non Aggressive in nature generally.
  • medium level enemies
• In general, you want to find a balance between combat being too easy and too hard or too long.
• Combined Arms
  • In strategy games especially, the concept of combined arms is important, and can potentially help you as well.
  • Combined arms are the combined use of different attack types into a single unit (mob) such that they complement each other’s weaknesses and allow for new tactics. For example, you might have one unit which has a large shield and can’t be attacked form the front, working with a spearman who can attack from just behind them (like the Spartan warriors in 300), and then they are supported by archers (ranged attack) in the rear, and possibly Calvary (fast mobile attack). So, in this combination, the group has many more attack and defense possibilities than say a group of swordsmen by themselves.
  • This is the same idea as players in RAID groups having the healer, dank and DPS, but taken to a larger level.
  • However, even a single player can benefit (have more fun) from you using this correctly.
  • The real question is whether you just want the players to be able to walk into an area and just attack one enemy at a time mindlessly, or whether you want to improve our placement of enemies and AI to make players think through the combat more.
  • Part of the problem however is that many scenarios can break in an MMO environment with lots of people. So, you also need to make sure that any new ideas of changes that you make will work when applied to the possibility of having large groups of players, or a large number of players. So, you can’t approach it like a typical single player game, but I do think there is a tremendous amount of improvement which can be done.
  • At a tactical level, this makes players figure out how to make the game easier or even possible. Ideas can include:
    • Having ranged units at a distance (on a hill, behind cover and such also help) – this can either just make the fight harder, or can make the player figure out how to take out the ranged units first, before attack the others. This might include using a sniper rifle or long range attack, using stealth (invisibility) to sneak through a group to attack their support units first, and so on.
    • Have shielded units who try and stay between you and who they are supposed to be protecting.
    • Having healers who continually heal or buff the enemies.
    • Having mages or others who debuff the player.
    • Having guards who raise alerts if they detect you (must be taken out fast and quietly)
    • Attack in swarms/groups
    • and so on…
• Weaknesses – forcing weapon use
  • Many enemies may also be immune to many attacks, or are MUCH more susceptible to some types of attacks. So, players must learn when to use certain weapons, spells or so on against some creatures – but this must be fairly obvious.
    • Note: maybe each player has a database of enemies and weapons. Players must/can scan new enemies and then have a scientist analyze it, to tell them what the enemy is susceptible to (players can’t necessarily just look it up on the internet). This susceptibility may/could also happen over time after the player uses enough of the proper buffs against the enemy as well.
    • So, players must learn how to use each susceptibility or “weak point” against an enemy, and then they will get a major bonus when doing so. This is another way for making some enemies easier to kill over time.
    • Knowing an enemy weak point may also allow you to automatically use the right ammo, spell or buffs as well, or maybe you can buy an auto change/buff gadget. Assuming this doesn’t remove some needed player skill.
    • Otherwise another possibility is that if you learn a weakness, maybe an icon appears over the enemies head, reminding you of what its weakness is. Or, some special icons/skills could also appear which let you more easily take advantage of the weakness.
  • The weakness system could also be a type of permanent buff, with many levels to it. So, maybe each enemy has levels 1-10+, and each level gives you an extra 1-5% or so of damage modifier when using the proper attacks and skills against them. This would encourage people to learn and use the weaknesses of enemies and pay attention a little more.
• Weapon, skill and attack diversity
  • If you look at a game like Ratchet & Clank, there are usually 50-100 weapons in the game, most of which are upgradeable. Players have a tremendous number of choices. Even in most FPS’s, players typically have 10+ weapons to easily and quickly choose between. Now, an MMO is not an action game, but typically in an RPG you gain a ton of weapons and skills, but often are limited to switching between two sets of weapons (for some reason). Maybe this analogy should be improved and more options provided to players.
  • However, if you let players use more weapons, skills and items, there needs to be reasons for it. This means that they either need to be ways to min/max the experience, or provide solutions to problems – which comes from better situations and better AI.
  • So, first of all, many weapons are good for something different (in theory). Even in an FPS, where a pistol, sub-machine gun, rifle, assault rifle and sniper rifle all shoot bullets, each has a different range and rate of fire, along with damage which make it useful in different situations and tactics. Players in FPS’s also have knives for super short ranges, grenades for groups of targets, scopes to increase accuracy and zoom in, flamethrowers (sometimes) for enemies in stronger cover like bunkers, rocket launchers for tanks and so on.
  • So, even though you’re not creating a linear FPS, you can still apply many of the ideas about how different weapons, along with enemy types make different tactics possible and fun.
  • The other aspect to this problem however is how enemies are constructed and used in the game. Now, a lot of this comes down to the systems designs of the enemies, and providing more diverse enemies in the game, but it also can relate to how the enemies are placed and used. So, the goal is to come up with ways to make a player want to use different tactics and skills, without frustrating them too much.
  • So, if you think about this from a level design problem for example, you could have a small fort, bunker, group of trees or something with some protection possibly for the enemies to hide in (this is assuming that the cover maybe has some benefit). so, imagine you have a desert, which is barren for 100 years on either side of this “fort” with a bunch of enemies in it with powerful long range guns. Well, as an individual, you’d probably learn to stay away at first, as you would be a prime target. Now, maybe with the right skills, like being an advanced sniper or something might help, or having a guided missile or other weapon which could hit the fort area could help you take them out so you can get to it. Or, maybe you need invisibility ability, a strong shield, to teleport or something like that. This single challenge could have many possible solutions. So, this scenario was possible because you combined an enemy ability, with an environmental condition/area which allowed them to maximize it.
  • Now, you could have maybe put some rocks outcroppings or other things around, making it a sort of movement puzzle for players that could maybe crouch, and move to the right areas.
  • Now, because some attacks are slow, or only really effective at long distances, players may learn that rushing these positions is the best approach, taking a little damage, but using a sprint or some speed boost to close the distance, and get into melee combat (if the “fort” would allow that. Now, if there are hazards allowed in the environment, then the fort could be surrounded by spikes or an electric field. Or, maybe they put some mines in, and players have to get through a minefield somehow.
  • Or, maybe to counter the rush by players (or make it more fun) the people in the fort unleash some small vicious “dogs” whenever you get close. This forces players to possibly need to switch weapons or tactics, or what not as suddenly they are swarmed by a bunch of small (and easy to kill, but numerous) enemies.
  • So, you can see, each enemy, weapon, skill, and world environment item should ultimately come together to create a variety of tactics for players. The key is just understanding how these systems break in multiplayer.
• “Global Changes”
  • Another thing which can be difficult in an MMO, but should be possible to utilize (especially in instances) is the idea of reinforcements through global changes. So, finding ways to change the world based on player actions can be another fun way to make him feel a part of it. Some examples are:
    • Some maps or areas are protected by helicopters (some kind of flying unit – like a Dragon), which are sent out from (spawned) at a helicopter pad, cave or somewhere on the map. If the player can find it, he can destroy it, and the thing will not attack him (until it respawns). So, if players don’t shut this down, this thing will bother them across the entire map. Finding and defeating this is very hard.
    • Electrical Cutoff might happen if you find and destroy a power generator on a building or base, shutting down all electrical driven devices.
    • Patrols – may roam the countryside and cause havoc until you find their barracks and destroy it.
    • Artillery or Catapult can attack you from very far away and must be destroyed to make the area safe for a time.
  • So, you can see that these ideas and many other possible ones could be used to many advantages.
  • Some global changes could happen during day/night change – as some enemies could only come out at night, and during other global changes like when it is raining, etc..
  • In some cases, if it doesn’t work, because of the nature of an MMO, and other players killing the global stuff, then maybe there are other ways, for example, maybe to get the thing/people to stop attacking you, maybe you need to “hide” from them, such that they won’t target you, but will attack others. This might be a good global system to implement. Hiding could be done in many more or less obvious ways:
    • Camouflage
    • Invisibility
    • EMP Shield blocks their sensors
    • Radar proof clothing blocks radar
    • These are obvious… however things like:
    • Carry the flag of their faction or wear the uniform (stolen) of their faction so they won’t fire on or attack you.
    • Scent glands spread on you could not allow them to sense you – and therefore they can’t find you as they are using scent to track you, or the scent glands you are using repulse them.
    • A “Mind Shield” keeps them from sensing your thoughts.
    • Silent Shoes make you walk quietly and not make noise which alerts some security.
    • Not moving in/on some terrain may not alert them – for example, some terrain could have sensors to detect you or could make lots of noise when you walk through it or other things which alert enemies.
    • and so on… many enemy types could have a way to counter how they find you.
    • However, once they find you, they act like normal and attack.
    • These systems may not be too hard to develop, as they are mostly just flipping an AI switch that says if you are detected or not, and should be fairly easy to develop (I think) as they are mostly just stats.
    • Regardless, you can see how this could open up a wide variety of options to the way that levels are designed and built.
    • The nice thing about this system, compared to you destroying say the helicopter pad, is that only you are protected, and other players in the area aren’t. This is a bit of a lock and key type system.
• Buffing
  • The MMO buff system should also be better utilized. Currently it only seems to come into play in most MMO’s late in the play cycle of the game, when players get into groups and such.
  • Using buffs is fairly (or should be) easy to do and straight forward and can add a tremendous amount of depth to the combat system and rest of the game.
  • You should look at ways to use the buff systems earlier and more often in the game.
• Other combat improvement possibilities include:
  • Hazards in the world – the world environments can and should have a variety of dangerous places in them. These could be pits (with spikes in them), fire, spikes and so on. Touching any of these (by player or enemy) causes damage or death. So, players must be careful and not move into them. However, players and enemies can be knocked into them using any weapon with knockback. This means that some skill in combat can benefit players in many fights, as they can do extra damage with the right timing of their attacks, as well as correct orientation so that enemies are knocked into the hazards.
• Traps
  • Maybe some enemies are tough to kill, or semi-immune to your weapons, making them VERY hard to kill. What if players could set traps and try to get enemies to fall into them. This could happen by knocking them into them, making them chase you into them, letting them walk over them as they move around, or putting something on the trap which attracts them.
  • The idea is to add a little more skill and interest into hunting.
• Puzzling Combat
  • In some regards, combat can also be seen as a giant puzzle. Players may need to figure out: who to attack first, how to attack, where to attack, when to run away, when to heal, what weapons to use, how to buff yourself, what special items to use, what armor to wear for protection and so on. So, in some regards, combat can be seen as a giant puzzle.
  • It’s ok to have some areas which are kind of mindless, or maybe allow players to buy some items which simplifies their combat experience against NPCS.
    • In PVP, players can maybe buy (or automatically get) some type of jammers pr devices which eliminate some of the possible ease of play enhancements devices which might be bought for PVE. So, in this way, you might be able to have the best of both worlds – for some players.
  • However, for most combat, some thinking should be involved, and that will make it a lot more fun in the end.

Movement

It is often necessary to control where players can go. Sometimes this is to protect players and keep them from dying instantly in areas they shouldn’t be, and sometimes it’s to just keep players separated that shouldn’t be happily co-existing because they are part of different factions or something like that. You don’t want to charge players to access new portals, but there are some ways to monetize this.

In a previous article I talked about you using a system to control where players can move. This system will greatly affect the way levels are laid out. The general idea is that players will need to acquire items (buy them) to either help them move through areas, or allow it at all. Some areas may allow players to move through them, but at a reduced speed (deep snow, sand, mud, bog), while other areas are dangerous (extreme cold, boiling hot, poison air, deadly bugs) and can kill you extremely quickly. So, to play in these areas, players may need some special items to allow them to properly play in them. Players may need to buy things like: snowshoes, gas masks and other items to protect them.

There are a wide variety of ways you can use this. This is basically a lock and key mechanic, allowing you to control where and when people go into some areas, and gain money through the control.

So, you need to understand how these areas will affect movement through a level. Maybe not an entire area has the restriction (but it could) but just some aspect of it. So, for example, players may climb a large hill, that turns very slowly into a blizzard and becomes very extreme in a small area. These areas may also have some enemy variants that are more dangerous as well, as these areas may be designed for higher level players. This system can also be a way to control some areas based on quests, as some items may only be given through the completion of quests.

So, one way to use this for example, is to have something in a small swamp that players want or need, but the shallow swamp water is electrified, and requires you to get special boot upgrades to prevent shock from walking in electricity, and once you have it, you can safely traverse the area and do what you need to in it safely. Otherwise, when you enter the water, you slowly start to take damage (not necessarily die instantly), such that higher level characters can risk entering for a very short time.

Another example could be a river you must swim across, but it has deadly fish in it (piranha) so you need a protective wetsuit before you can swim in it. Or, players may eventually learn to fly or something over it too.

Other movement restrictions could also come from toll bridges or things which limit player’s movement by charging. You can also look at other ways of restricting player’s movement by requiring players to have the proper security clearance. So, this could restrict player’s movement through portals, into certain buildings, through security checkpoints and anywhere else you want to keep people out of unless they have the right to be there, and have some story justification for it. And of course, you can have locked doors with keys as well.

Dispersing Players

You also often want to encourage players to disperse themselves because too many players might tend to gather in some areas. This is mostly the case in the main city. But, you need to watch out for areas where too many players might tend to congregate. So, any areas around where there is shopping, trading, socializing and what not should be carefully designed and made to keep people apart, but not be too inconvenient for players.

This is a tricky subject, as you want players to feel like there are many other players in the world.

Crowding also happens in popular dungeons and other places, which is why instances became popular (for one reason).

In some cases, this may also mean that you need to use more instances to spread people out and get them onto other servers. This can happen in several ways. You may need to have special quests which become available when servers get full, which require people to go to other portals (servers) to accomplish the tasks.

You might make some areas an instance. For example, maybe many vendors stand outside their shops, but if areas get too crowded, maybe you cause a massive storm to come in, which makes all of the normal shops close. Then the vendors all go and sell their warez at the mall, which is an indoor instance, and gets people to go there, spreading them out.

There is no perfect answer for player dispersal, and it will be something you need to constantly watch and will find ourselves constantly adjusting for. This is one reason why having vendors who stand outside is good, as you can relocate them on a whim. Or, if stores require a load, and for you to go inside, you can have them move to someplace else, if it was important, either to spread some people out, or to make it more convenient for people. You can also adjust which vendors sell what, which will change who is going to each vendor and disperse popular items.

You also already plan to have 3 levels to the city, which will help disperse some players.

Summary

This article just touches on some concepts for how to make Zones/Areas/Cities/Worlds/Areas/Places in MMO’s much more interesting for players with a minimal amount of work. I throw this out there as a challenge to the content designers of many MMO’s and in hopes that they will be challenged to improve their games and make them more fun and exciting to play. Not all of these ideas will work for every game, but it does show that a lot of the current ideas which are widely adopted in many DIQU MUD style MMO’s are antiquated and can be improved. So hopefully this article will inspire you to improve your worlds and make your game a lot better in the long run. Hope you enjoyed the ideas. Thanks for reading.