This year should see the introduction of the first serious MMOs on the next gen consoles. Final Fantasy and Fantasy Star Online on the 360 don't really count as serious; they're far too niche and never really grabbed a decent number of people for the platform (360, not the ones they're popular on). Now with The Agency, All Points Bulletin and (when they decide to start coding it) Age of Conan on the horizon the dawn of a new age is upon us. Or is it? I have my doubts, and I think it’s because we’re wrong as MMO players.
As I’m sure I’ve mentioned to anybody who will listen I believe that the console controllers are no barrier to play. In fact I think it would be a positive boon as MMOs are far too fond of using complexity to hide lack of depth in the game mechanics. This leaves us in the strange position where Eve is probably one of the easiest games to port the combat controls to a console. Madness, I know but imagine this (360 used for example, but PS3 just as applicable): High, medium and low slots are easy. You use the D pad to get all 8 high slots and use the two triggers to select either medium or lows as needed. A “fire all weapons” button would be handy, and is rumoured to be coming to the game anyway as 99% of the time you just want to open up with all batteries (missiles and NPCs not included in that statement of course). Movement can be using the left stick (hey, people have wanted joystick support for years) and the right stick can control the camera. A can be accelerate, B to slow down and… Well that’s about all you need except for Y to warp (almost forgot that one. It can bring up a menu for quick selection of destination using up and down). Oh, you’ll need a target button too. And loot. You get the drift anyway. Now the reason you can do this (although it might not be quite as good as mouse and keyboard in reality) is that Eve has very simple combat mechanics at that level. Where it gets hideously complicated is in the actual situational awareness, energy management and that general gut feeling that you get about a fight that tells you when you need to bug out before it starts to get all bad and explody. With consoles simple mechanics is good, and complex reality is better as it rewards skill.
So, design your game right and the controller isn’t a problem. Even if you don’t do that you’ve still got the 360’s chat pad, which is a surprisingly good piece of kit and gives you a bundle of new keys to trigger things from. If you’re on the PS3 then you can even use Keyboards and Mice in the game as in, I believe, the latest Unreal Tournament. What’s the problem then?
The problem is this: TVs. I’m a freak who has his consoles running to an HD TV on his (overly full) desk, I suspect most people use their main TV and the rest of the family want to watch shows every so often. You just can’t tie up a TV for hours on end, and no games require that more that MMOs. In order for MMOs to be big on consoles they’re going to have to be a lot more drop in friendly. All Points Bulletin may get it right by not having levels or, so they say, grind, but I suspect that means that it’s going to get a bad reception by the typical MMO crowd because it’s not enough to hold you in 7 days a week for 3 or 4 hours. It may sell it to the players of non-MMOs though.
So how is it our fault? Is it because we’re obsessive? No, I don’t think that’s it, we're just enthusiastic about the games we play. I think it’s because we think we’re playing MMOs when we need to just consider ourselves playing persistent multiplayer games. MMOs have too much baggage that now we can’t drop, the term will actively drive people away because of the assumption that all MMOs are time intensive grind fests, and we don’t help this by resisting the dumbing down of games such as Warcraft. I think this is why everybody in the industry seems to be looking towards micropayments. You can’t charge a monthly fee for a drop in game, witness Planetside as an example of that. I’d love to know how many of their remaining paying and playing members are on Station Access accounts, I would think that it’s most. Without that life support mechanism would it still be open, or maybe it would be a Mexican standoff with the last three players holding a gun to the guy next to him pointing at his head? Actually I like that image, the ultimate in reaction based gaming.
I think Guildwars is right here, and Warcraft are learning too. You need to be able to skip the grind. A game is about 5, 10 or 60 minutes fun followed by some unwinding and maybe the next game. Create a higher level char after fulfilling some requirement. The grind is only fun the first time. If that with some games.
Online persistent worlds folks, that's what we play. There's no shame in only playing half an hour a week, and if you're not at level 70, or at 80 million skill points or whatever you're no less of a player than anybody else. If you have fun you're just as worthwhile as everybody else. You can be the most hardcore Eve PvP badass you want, or you can log into WOW to just keep up with your friends. We're all on the same exciting ride to see where these games go in the future.
Two days as part of Virginworlds and I’m saying we should give up on the MMO thing. Go me!