[MUD-Dev] CoH (was: MMORPG Cancellations: The sky is falling?)

[Sean Howard]

"Oliver Smith" <oliver at kfs.org>

> In short - it is to date the MMORPG most akin to being a graphical
> MUD.

Be more specific. A DikuMUD. MUSHes, MUSEs, MUCKs, MOOs, lpMUDs, and
whatever variations exist these days all have scripting languages
where mere players can extend the world in meaningful ways. What the
game engine fails to provide, the players can fill in the
blanks. CoH is a closed system, where the players have little to no
impact on the world and gameplay in any way.

> MMORPGs are an entertainment medium, and CoH is, to me, like a
> great pilot.

Saying MMORPGs are an entertainment medium is like saying books are
an entertainment medium. Think of this as a college professor
explaining to his students that A Tale of Two Cities is a better
book than the Hardy Boys #13.

> My measure of Cryptic and NCSoft will be how they build on it -
> whether they add content that panders to their players to extend
> their entertainment, or they do their own thing and expect their
> players to enjoy what's served to them.

Their future plans for CoH and the CoV expansion are almost word for
word what I wrote in a blog before CoH was released, so I already
know that I agree with the direction they are going. I REALLY agree
with it. But the point is, they aren't there yet. You can't praise a
game now for vague ideas of kinda maybe what they might do at some
unspecified point in the near and/or distant future.

Please don't think I'm just a hater. I like CoH. I have high hopes
for the future of it. I think Cryptic is a great company with a lot
of talent. I think the premise is brilliant and I think that there
is the kind of potential in CoH that makes me giddy inside. But if
we praise the shallow gameplay, then we may never see that
potential. All these great ideas about buying villian lairs and
joining evil organizations will be a waste if they are as shallow as
the enhancement/inspiration/level/dungeon/class systems are.

The thing that really frustrates me is that the enhancement thing is
a GOOD idea. In fact, it is a brilliant idea. The same thing with
the instanced dungeons and the other stuff I listed. There is a lot
of inspiration in that game. But it just wasn't followed through on.

> But my measure of CoH is this: I won't play it daily, but I will
> keep an account, because without first performing a ritual
> obligation of sufferance I can choose of an evening to spend a
> little time being a super hero and laying some smack down on some
> evil villains.

You can buy Diablo II, Morrowind, Divine Divinity, Temple of
Elemental Evil, Icewind Dale II, Gothic II, and Neverwinter Nights
for about $10 each, and each providing more interesting and varied
gameplay that will last you a long time of beating the crap out of
stuff... for less than the price of the game itself and one month of
CoH.

For the price of CoH and three months of play, you can purchase SWG
(at $30), Dark Age of Camelot (at $10), Anarchy Online (at $5),
Neocron (at $5), PlanetSide (at $8), Everyquest (at $10), Shadowbane
(at $3), and Horizons (at $13). That's EIGHT free months for around
$80 on pretty much all the other MMORPGs available (except FFXI and
Lineage 2).

If you just want to "lay the smack down", there are plenty of
cheaper alternatives which don't require you to rebuy them every
month just to play for 2 hours every other week.

> And I deem that to be the greatest possible form of game play:
> Attainable.

That's the greatest possible form of positive reinforcement. That's
not the greatest possible form of gameplay. It is pretty well
documented by people much smarter and well spoken than me that
gameplay is at its best when it is a series of interesting
decisions. CoH practically plays itself.

Can you list 10 interesting decisions you have to make in the game
in the first... 10 levels of play? I'll start you off. If you can't
think of 10, I'll even throw you a bone and let you use character
visuals and class/origin selection as the first two.

> You don't need to *defend* depth, because nothing on the market
> has it.

I disagree. And even if that were the case, the potential for future
depth would be damaged by people taking the wrong positives from CoH
and trying to emulate it. It's like when GTA3 came out and every
game, for better or worse, tried to take place in a large free
roaming area with mission.  Remember State of Emergency?

I think there is a lot to learn from CoH - real positive stuff that
you can use to improve your own products - but the depth of gameplay
is not one of them. I know you enjoy CoH, but the shallow gameplay
is NOT the reason you enjoy it. I promise you this. You are trying
to justify your enjoyment of CoH by praising its faults.

> The harbingers of what currently passes for depth simply have a
> sizeable library of content and a lot of rules to limit what you
> can access and how quickly.  In essence they are selling you
> weekly serials but somehow expecting you to stay tuned to the
> channel throughout.

I disagree with that as well. I used to play on Club Caribe - it's
kind of old, but I think most people here have at least heard of
Habitat (which Club Caribe was the public release of). The fact is,
if you give interesting people unique ways to communicate with each
other, they will find amazing things to do. That's one of the most
important lessons of LucasFilm's Habitat.

It's not content which gives depth, but what you do with that
content. In Club Caribe, just the ability to write notes on a
virtual notepad made all the difference in the world. People started
newspapers with it. Some put advertisements on the notes and left
them around the world. Some wrote stories and sold them for
tokens. In a MMORPG, the real depth is the player interaction with
the world and with each other.

- Sean Howard
www.squidi.net
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