Every game we sit down to has a Story, it has a Lore, it has a Culture that we are drawn too and want to engage in. Within this story we find a way to connect to the adventurers that we create, customize, name, and set forth within the game environment to acheive goals the writers want us to explore and experience.
When a game reaches its apex and a character has developed to what we have deemed as "End-Game" the player has run out of options to explore with a gain or reward. These players have acheived a status that makes them near god in much of the content, though an MMO will never toss out a "The-End" cut scene. This is almost always answered with a change to the story or a growth of the origin story with an expansion.
Some games have approached this with terrible skill and ability. Some games we have seen amazing growth from opened area's that were hinted to within the original stories and the lore. And others will toss treasures to us to help absorb the new content, this usually comes in the form of new player races and/or classes. And only one game I can think of, EVE Online, gave us expansions with different enemy threats and extremely minimal changes to the player mechanics. This was almost inspiring because some of the enemies were a challenge to many, but easy to a class/setup that was rarely played. It brought a new series of ships and skills to the field that weren't used often.... scanning, probing, EM lasers....etc.
This all being said.
Red
I don't think any game making you a god at the first "level cap" is well thought. Level cap is mostly here to make sure there is a common referential for every player, not to state "you're a god now and can't grow further".
The same goes with boring narratives where it seems lik you save the world of any threat, only to make cataclysmic events the day the expansion release. That's one of the weaknesses of World of Warcraft. At first the basic game was pretty modest and every possible lore arc was hidden and far to be "apocalyptic". But the futher the expansion grew, the more you had that "YOU NEED TO SAVE THE WORLD, HERO, OR EVERYTHING WILL BE LOST" which is just crap. Players should never be an automated hero brought to save the world, but explorers delving in the past and dangerous areas.
Basically, to me, expansions should never be "super narrative tied", but new openings of unknown areas. Magical or physical barriers brought down by work or hazard.
MauvaisOeil said:Players should never be an automated hero brought to save the world, but explorers delving in the past and dangerous areas.
Basically, to me, expansions should never be "super narrative tied", but new openings of unknown areas. Magical or physical barriers brought down by work or hazard.
I LOVE THIS!
Expansions should show us more depth to the game from historical points. I feel we should still have room to grow but the history is where we learn the "Why". I always thought Stargate SG-1 did this well with the growth of the Ancient story-arc that drew history to the present and the need to understand we are so much smaller than the space we inhabit.
Red
I agree.
One thing I particularly disliked in certain MMOs was having a major world or universe threatening enemy become irrelevant or even an ally in a later expansion.
There was just too much disconnect between the way players at lower levels viewed the world and discussed it in chat and the way high level players did.
Of course this ties in with the previous comments in this thread. If our character isn't a world-overarching hero that changes the universe this isn't an issue.
We've had a few other conversations about expansions here over the years, just in case you haven't seen them Red. You might want to search through them a bit, there's a lot of good discussion :)
As far as dos/don'ts, here's my thoughts:
1) Don't always raise the level cap. In fact, this should be really rare. Raising the level cap can be really damaging to the health of the rest of the game if it's not handled with extreme care.
2) Do add significant amounts of new area to explore. No one likes expansions where you see everything in a week.
3) Do try to add new gameplay features - whether it's housing, or AAs, or guild trophies, or whatever. An expansion that's just a bunch of new zones doesn't have much hook to it. But if it's a bunch of new zones + epic quest lines or a new race, that's different.
4) Do make sure the expansion provides something new for lower level players. When expansions cater solely to the high end, it just ends up pulling the high level people away from everyone else in the game. This goes hand in hand with level caps.
5) Don't introduce new features that trivialize or render older parts of the game obsolete.
6) If the expansion has a storyline, avoid TV season syndrome where each expansion introduces some new world-ending threat that players have to deal with. That might be fine for the first expansion or two but after a while it just starts to stretch credulity.
If you read all these and you're thinking, "Neph those don't make a lot of sense", it's probably because I still need coffee this morning.
Redroostah said:
- What are your thoughts on the roll-out and implementation of expansions within Pantheon?
- What would you look forward to with an expansion?
- What would you dread seeing happen in an expansion within Pantheon?
- If you could be part of the development of change what would that look like?
Red
Expansions are necessary. A game with no growth, dies. How and when expansions are introduced should be under a more dynamic approach in response to how the players are consuming content. This does require the developers to keep a continuous eye on how players are progressing through existing content, which content is being overlooked or ignored and which content is being over consumed. While it is much easier to take the approach of releasing expansions on a set schedule, a better approach does allow for some degree of variability..either an earlier release or later as the situation warrants. The key point though is to make sure the expansion is feature complete and well tested.
My preference for expansions is combination of outward growth and inward discovery. By this I mean discovering new areas outside the existing known world is exciting, but so too is new areas (or changes to existing areas) discovered in the known world. I look at old EQ1 zones like SolA/B and UpperGuk/LowerGuk. Why couldn't there be an earthquake that opened up new caverns filled with previously unheard of inhabitants? Or that the Clockwork Gnomes in SolA just kept expanding their mining or that the Frogloks of LowerGuk didn't also do the same thing? A key point here though is new expansions of either flavor should never wholly invalidate that which came before. The 'old world' should remain relevant, always presenting a need for players to use what existed.
My fear for expansions are one that force the playerbase to abandon 'the old world'. That can be through new items which out perform the best of what players could obtain previously or, through an increase in level cap, has content for those new levels only in this new land. I also do not want to see the introduction of a new race where that race exists wholly removed from all the other races, able to level up to the cap only within their own lands.
I cannot do programming, I can't draw a straight line with a rule and lack any ability to put pen to paper to illustrate what I see in my mind. All I can do is describe through words ideas for spells, abilities, zones, quests, etc. If I had enough money to contribute such that I could design a zone I would do that. So for right now, my best way to contribute is through my pledge, my continued reading and posting to these forums and through any activity that VR wishes me to perform.
Nephele said:We've had a few other conversations about expansions here over the years, just in case you haven't seen them Red. You might want to search through them a bit, there's a lot of good discussion :)
Definitely. Here they are:
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/6563/content-of-expansions
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/4865/expansions
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/4964/the-problem-with-expansions-in-mmos
A lot of good discussion already been had. Feel free to jump in on those.
Nephele said:We've had a few other conversations about expansions here over the years, just in case you haven't seen them Red. You might want to search through them a bit, there's a lot of good discussion :)
That statement is true for every topic that is brought up on these forums. Somewhere, at some time, someone has brought it up and discussed it over many pages. Search function needs to be dramatically improved. :)
Nephele said:We've had a few other conversations about expansions here over the years, just in case you haven't seen them Red. You might want to search through them a bit, there's a lot of good discussion :)
As far as dos/don'ts, here's my thoughts:
1) Don't always raise the level cap. In fact, this should be really rare. Raising the level cap can be really damaging to the health of the rest of the game if it's not handled with extreme care.
2) Do add significant amounts of new area to explore. No one likes expansions where you see everything in a week.
3) Do try to add new gameplay features - whether it's housing, or AAs, or guild trophies, or whatever. An expansion that's just a bunch of new zones doesn't have much hook to it. But if it's a bunch of new zones + epic quest lines or a new race, that's different.
4) Do make sure the expansion provides something new for lower level players. When expansions cater solely to the high end, it just ends up pulling the high level people away from everyone else in the game. This goes hand in hand with level caps.
5) Don't introduce new features that trivialize or render older parts of the game obsolete.
6) If the expansion has a storyline, avoid TV season syndrome where each expansion introduces some new world-ending threat that players have to deal with. That might be fine for the first expansion or two but after a while it just starts to stretch credulity.
If you read all these and you're thinking, "Neph those don't make a lot of sense", it's probably because I still need coffee this morning.
I will definitely do some research with older threads. I had a bourbon or 2 and wanted to share my thoughts LOL. I appreciate a lot of what you wrote though, it seems as if a lot of us old school gamers crave the same.
Red
Porygon said:Can anyone really answer this without first seeing the developed game. I mean we dont even know what the game will look like. What the endgame will be. What the replayability is.
I feel like having a boiler plate example of what an expansion should is just a bad idea.
This post was designed to chat about what we feel are positives and negatives to expansions we have seen within other games. Since Pantheon hasn't launched we definitely don't have an understanding of the developers ideas of growing the game down the road but threads like these are read and I am certain are points of conversation in meetings and conference calls.
Red
Bazgrim said:Nephele said:We've had a few other conversations about expansions here over the years, just in case you haven't seen them Red. You might want to search through them a bit, there's a lot of good discussion :)
Definitely. Here they are:
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/6563/content-of-expansions
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/4865/expansions
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/4964/the-problem-with-expansions-in-mmos
A lot of good discussion already been had. Feel free to jump in on those.
Thanks Baz!
Red
My personal opinion is that games go too much with level cap raises/new gear treadmill as taking your money every 12-24 months. (EVE expansions are technically free, they never charge you anything except the monthly fee, and you don't even have to pay that anymore if you run a free account.) When WoW launched, one of the inputs they took from the EQ playerbase was that EQ had expansions too often. This is why Vanilla WoW didn't, it had 12 major content patches (though some were meatier than others) and a bunch of minor one with little fixes or tweaks to things like adding weather/rain (cosmetic, but still an addition to the game at the time). The major ones tended to add new instances or raids (or both). It was only when they went to Outland that they got the $40 expansion bug and never have cured themselves of it. As if $15/month isn't enough, I guess.
I personally think that the levels in games are ridiculous these days anyway. Baldur's Gate you ended the game around level 7-9 (depending on class, since they took different XP to level), with the expansion adding 1-2 levels per class, and the second game with its expansion getting somewhere into the 30s (you're basically demi-gods by the end of it, though admittedly that takes a while). WoW, FFXIV, even Pantheon all seem to have this idea you need 50-60 levels in the base game. Why not 40? Why not 30? Or even just 20? It would "make room" for expansions to not get so bogged down with ability bloat if you didn't already have so many abilities to start with (FFXIV is just the second expansion in, and already level 70 with 2-3 bar sets per player. WoW is, what, level cap 110 now? 120? It's ridiculous!)
I also think that content should be released in content patches, not expansions. And expansions should ideally be free if the game has a monthly sub fee - development costs can come out of subs. (GW had expansions that costed money, but no monthly fee, Eve has free expansions with a monthly fee, either of these two systems I'm fine with). Expansions should be for when you add really new things in a big bunch all at once. New continent/planes+new class+new race type of things. It shouldn't be for "little" things like opening up a new zone that was previously walled off or adding a new dungeon or raid to the existing parts of the world.
I'd also like to see levels NOT added all the time. It's such a waste of time. When WoW puts out a new expansion, you have to grind out 10 more levels before actually getting to the end-game content. Sure, you can get the "story" from the new zones, but (a) a lot of these stories aren't that interesting anyway and (b) for the ones that are, why can't I just get an instant ding to level cap and then run the areas for...you know...the STORY, not the xp grind? It makes no sense to even add new levels since all it is is a barrier to content. And...that's the point - it adds another few weeks or months to players' playtime, which means a few months of $15/month to Blizzard that they might not otherwise get.
I MUCH prefer just having content patches instead - hell, even for new classes, etc - with more horizontal progression. More new things to do. When an expansion comes out, I'm going to keep playing my race/class (I tend to get a lot of loyalty to my characters, not roll a new one just because there's a new class released, even if I might like that class, I tend to stick with my main [exception: Games like FFXIV where you can just learn all classes on a single character...it has its benefits, I guess...]), but I just want to go to those new areas and explore. Not have to grind out another 10 levels before I can once again start "doing content". The artificial time gating is stupid, but it's also indicative of the game's philosophy of the gear treadmill, which you can only mount once you're at level cap (the gear you gain while leveling being essentially worthless purple vendor trash once you hit the new level cap).
I think any system that AVOIDS these things is preferable:
-So many abilities added/button bloat
-New levels added basically for no good reason
-Charging a full price game for a new class and some new zones
-Making old gear/content useless
-Having the new content's first random creature drop epic super gear that renders your hard won tier set worthless
-Empties out old zones as everyone goes to the new content and ignores the old (instead of adding more content to existing zones)
In fact, I think doing away with the concept of "expansions" entirely would be great. I'm not sure anyone, even Pantheon, will do it, though.
And you certainly don't need new expansions for new things - WoW added mini continents with major content patches, FFXIV added the Ninja job/Rogue class in a content patch, etc. Expansions are NOT NEEDED in the MMORPG world, really. Expansion is just a way of saying "larger than normal content patch that we're charging money for and maybe adding some levels to grind". I'd love it if games and gamers and developers could get over the whole concept and go back to content patches just being part of the game that are added periodically. (Story can be added this way, too - in WoW, each expansion has 2-4 major content patches that each advance the story!)
All I really care about is new levels/AAs and places to go and gear to acquire, everything else is icing on the cake. Once the exp I earn no longer matters, I find these games start to drag and feel more like a chore. My main always needs to be progressing as I don't really care about alts, and eventually I will max a tradeskill when I feel forced to do so.
I obviously understand that the devs don't want to get crazy overpowered, particularly in the short term, so really it just means they need to limit how much of a bonus an AA gives you, i.e. instead of +5 str make it only +1-2. It may take me forever to get them all, but at least I will likely never max out.
I think progeny could be really helpful here, depending on how they go. This is probably one of the biggest questions I have left
I agree with the great majority of what has already been said. To add just a little on two points that aren't necessarily the most important but did grab my attention.
((4) Do make sure the expansion provides something new for lower level players. When expansions cater solely to the high end, it just ends up pulling the high level people away from everyone else in the game. This goes hand in hand with level caps.))
Oh so very true, and so very common in MMOs. A new expansion comes in almost anyone with a high level character plays it - the new areas are enormously overcrowded - and the lower level areas are mostly empty. Not good for anyone starting the game during this period or who had started earlier but didn't have a high level character.
((All I really care about is new levels/AAs and places to go and gear to acquire, everything else is icing on the cake. Once the exp I earn no longer matters, I find these games start to drag and feel more like a chore. My main always needs to be progressing as I don't really care about alts, and eventually I will max a tradeskill when I feel forced to do so.))
Not the way I play but the way many people do play - so it needs to be addressed. The reasons not to go overboard on raising the maximum level have often been discussed. The reasons for not endlessly boosting the strength of gear have also often been discussed.
This being the case, I want to add my agreement that there should be some benefit to the character from an expansion or major content release, not merely new areas to explore with the same gear and abilities. So how can this be done?
1. Modest, and I emphasize modest, improvements to gear or attributes. To use AD&D terms - if the best weapon in the game is a +6 sword, making a +7 sword available gives a nice incentive without allowing the lucky recipient to become Godslike and able to sweep through previously difficult content as if it was nothing. If strength caps at 18 , allowing it to go to 19 or even 20 has the same result. Enough to give players a reason to care but not too unbalancing. Yes after a few expansions old content gets trivial but that is a cheap price to pay for keeping players busy for an extra few years.
2. Lateral improvements that do not even affect old content and leave it just as difficult. Thus, adventures in a desert. A year or two of getting gear with all new desert attributes letting you face harder and harder desert foes. None of which do you any good when you go back to an older rain forest zone. Add a new attribute - personal air conditioning. The higher your PAC score the better you do in the new areas but it doesn't help anywhere else.
What are your thoughts on the roll-out and implementation of expansions within Pantheon.
Well, there are a few dangerous parts about the release of an expansion to any game. One is the level increase. Once lvl increase happens , how obsolete are the older zones and gear? It is very tough to balance. Luckily, I don't think you need level increases with each expansion. EQ did this and worked nicely for a few expansions. Also, if you don't make better gear that is equivelent to other gear in older zones, you won't have dead zones right away. Secondly, I would say more areas to explore can also kill an MMO. Alot of people think more areas to explore is usually better, but I think that is one of the biggest causes of MMOs dying. More areas, or content, to explore doesn't equal a better game or good expansion. The problem with this is that developers usually try to maintain a server population that isn't over crowded, but isn't under crowded either.
This happens at the start of an MMO and the population usually only increases during the first few expansions. Even WoW got to like 15 million at its peak in Burning Crusade or Wrath of the Lich King and started losing its population. I think near the end Cataclysm, where the really messed up, the population was around 5 million at that time. Now they have these connected groups of servers to make up for the void of all the low pop servers now.
This will happen in Pantheon. So as content gets bigger and the population starts to decrease from the people who usually only play a year or 2 and move on no matter what MMO it is, then all that content you added becomes empty. Its very hard getting new people if you are a few expansions in because people like playing when the game first came out. The only exception is if the advertising is good and gives that want to play the game. If the world gets too big, then it will collapse later on. However, no one seems to mind this or see this as a problem, so eventually pantheon will have to deal with a lot of dead zones in the future.
What would you look forward to with an expansion?
More expansion on the lore, and altered zones.
What would you dread seeing happen in an expansion within Pantheon?
Level increase and content increase every expansion
If you could be part of the development of change what would that look like?
I would be against constant zone expansion. I think some is good, but there as to be a limit. Like our world, we aren't ever expanding, but we are ever changing. Some expansions I would be tempting to wipe out certain zones from the game, obviously using a lore stand point, and then later on adding something new. For one expansion I may have another world pass by in orbit and the wizards and druids could port to that land and it be explored for a few years and then have an expansion where some asteriod hits the planet and destroys everything on it and its shards hit terminous and causes a lot of change to zones. Maybe an asteriod would collaspe the ground in one area opening a new underground dungeon that had high lvl mobs and a raid mob that were in a slumber and awoken by the impact.
Stuff like that. They need to come up with away to make the world feel alive. Not just expanding every expansion, because that will kill the game.
Also, as a side note. Building a world like this will make progression servers way more appealing. This will give incentive to new players to come in and experience the game at the start with all these world altering events that happen to experience the game from the beginning and not feel left behind once they get caught up.
Redroostah said: Since Pantheon hasn't launched we definitely don't have an understanding of the developers ideas of growing the game down the road but threads like these are read and I am certain are points of conversation in meetings and conference calls.
I wish I could find it for you quickly but I'm not exactly sure which stream it was said in, but Brad aka Aradune did speak a little bit about this. I will try to paraphrase from memory, but he spoke about the fact that they have already planned out 10 years worth of progression and put thought into how things like item and stat inflation will be managed. How the power curve will change as they go into future expansions.
Also of note is this thread: How much... where Aradune was answering a question about Matchmaking systems. The relevent part says this:
Aradune said:
The Pantheon opportunity is arguably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And I can speak for myself certainly, and also confidently for the majority of the team, if not all of them: we are in this for the long haul. This is *not* fire and forget. So many ideas and dreams we have can't even start without a solid launch and enough players from all different walks of life having a great time and supporting this company with monthly subs. The launch of an MMO is like a baby being born -- beautiful, exciting, engrossing... but still a foundation upon which to then build SO much more. For a variety of reasons not right to go into details right now, none of us have been able to stay on an MMO from inception, through development, then launch, and then for years of expansions, DLCs, revamping, retooling, keeping fresh. Even a game I am *so* proud of and always will be, that is still around, that has remained commercially successful for almost 19 years now -- even that game was not built by a team that stuck together -- while it launched with a solid vision and that vision remained consistent for a couple of expansions, eventually everyone was replaced. And those that replaced did not come on board thinking 'hey, let's hold together that original Vision, see it through, build upon it.' More accurately it was looked at as an opportunity to come in and replace the original Vision with however they saw what the game should have been, and where it should have gone forward. And this didn't happen just once, but several times -- teams replaced and therefore visions replaced. I cast no blame here, nor disrespect, and simply speak the truth with no other motive than that people have an accurate understanding of history and of the impact, significant impact, that such changes can and do have real and long-term ramifications.
The opportunity we have here with Pantheon, having both Vision and Grand Vision, the long-term commitments being made as we slowly but surely teambuild, are arguably unique in the history of not only MMOs but in computer/video gaming as a whole. This is something we take very seriously and even the idea, random thought, or brain fart of squandering such an opportunity absolutely unthinkable.
I added the Underline to highlight the point here. Aradune is saying that if things go to plan, they hope to have a consistent team that stays with the project long term over many (all?) expansions so that they can keep things going on the projected path without deviations in 'Vision' that cloud the goals they have for how things will progress into the future.