Minimally Multiplayer, by Stephen Zepp

So a smart guy named Stephen Zepp landed on F13 forums after they have been linked on /.

The discussion is interesting:

Stehpen Zepp:
(speaking about massive non-instanced game spaces)
It’s not a matter of “can” anymore, it’s a matter of “want to”.

Even though on the surface it sounds cool as a marketing ploy, there just isn’t that many reasons to want that many players on a single world, and several to not want it:

–content distribution: to have 15,000 players in a single world, you have to have somewhere to put them all, much less keep them busy

–performance: it’s simply easier on the hardware (primarily the db server clusters) to parallel your critical performance paths instead of serialize them (and yes, I know that there are several mechanisms and schemas for optimizing that many users–but those are in business related db models that have been optimized over 20+ years in some cases, for very specific task structures. MMO databases don’t have classes that teach any Joe Schmoe the umpteenth iteration of db structures and optimization for the tasks required)

–sociological research: there are quite a few sociological and anthropological studies that report the max “efficient” community size is somewhere between 200-350. After that, instead of a single community, it becomes a set of sub-communities. From a gameplay perspective, since most MMOG’s that bother doing research are trying to enhance their “communities”, they sometimes take things like this to heart.

–based on the relative success of MMOG’s that use instancing in some form or another, less appears to be more to the current market, not the reverse. Players want their own little areas and worlds with only their friends, not tens of thousands of others (Personally, I think this is an artifact, not a true demographical observation of the MMOG market, but I seem to be in the minority on that).

I remember Jeff Freeman commenting along these lines on MUD-Dev. I find interesting, instead, this line: “After that, instead of a single community, it becomes a set of sub-communities”. That sounds like something extremely interesting to have, imho. It’s not a case that my idea of “dream mmorpg” tries hard to both mantain the “universe” feel and at the same time offers the tools to toy with smaller communities where the single players and the guilds gain a personality and an identity, becoming well known and generating politics and gameplay themselves.

What he says is true to consider and develop better structures inside the game but it isn’t enough to ditch the idea of a “massive world”. At least not when you are using the strength of it and not just its weaknesses.

Then he moves on a different topic (or the same, depending on the point of view):

Stephen Zepp:
It’s been debated back and forth a lot in the forums in other threads, but I have to admit I don’t understand the rationale of turning a “Massively Multiplayer” game into a “Minimally Multiplayer” game by creating separate zones/areas/worlds/whatever you want to call them for very small subsets of a world’s population to play in.

What the popularity of instancing games tells me is that the draw of a MMOG is not the same for all players in the target market, and in many ways people actually don’t want a Massively Multiplayer experience, what they really want is a decent quality game to play with a small selection of friends.

That’s not a bad thing at all, but I think the huge subscription numbers WoW sees, and all the other top end MMOG’s are seeing is a consolidated result of much more than just the game’s quality and it’s MMOG nature–in many ways it’s because the Minimally Multiplayer genre doesn’t have enough members for them to be satisfied.

Which, in turn, implies that there is an “undiscovered market” of Minimally Multiplayer purchasers out there that hasn’t been tapped yet, and ultimately will drive the subscription numbers of current MMOGs down by an undetermined amount when that genre is tapped.

I understood and agreed till the end of the second paragraph, then I lost track of the logic. But let’s continue:

Stephen Zepp:
–I should been more clear in my question: If what you want to provide to your customer base is a Minimally Multiplayer experience, why in the hell are you building a Massively Multiplayer (and all the infrastructure upkeep that entails) in the first place? Build a Minimially Multiplayer game from the get-go.

1) Ahh, but that right there describes why it’s not “immersive” to me at all. How in the hell can you be immersed in a persistent world when the same arch villians have to be killed over and over and over and over again (or even can be killed in that manner). If Captain Super did win the day, then dammit, the world should know about it…not let me go ahead and win the day against the same opponents as well, just cause.

2) Bingo. Respawn is such a huge kludge, and completely destroys immersion of any sort whatsoever. Even with your difference of “CoH, they never respawned for me, while WoW they even respawned for me”, you still are respawning..and therefore the player’s actions are not interactively persistent. No matter what anyone does, Mob X is still gonna be hanging out next week waiting for someone to come kill him again. Instancing compounds this lack of interactive persistence in it’s attempt to fix other issues.

Instancing IMHO is putting a bandaid on the symptom, instead of diagnosing the disease and curing it.

The last line is the key, imho. Quoting myself:

Instancing is a profitable workaround but isn’t about addressing the real problem to move further.

More reiterations:

Stephen Zepp:
I’m not being clear then. My point is that if a game developer plans to give his players a “Minimally Multiplayer” game by using instances, then they should design the game as a Minimally Multipayer game from the beginning, instead of wrapping their real game presentation (1-20 players in an instanced zone) with a massively multiplayer design (and all it’s inherent limitations), infrastructure, and marketing scheme. What is happening right now commercially IMHO is companies building a mercedes benz using a touring bus as the blueprint, and marketing it as an 18 wheeler.

If the companies would actually design a Minimally Multiplayer game instead of doing what I describe above, you would get more features, functionality, and awesome game play than you do now, not less.

[answering a comment]
No, not at all. In fact, the entire purpose of this model is that the world itself becomes the content, not static “expansion zones” that have to be released month after month to keep things new and fresh. By nature of the combined models (interactive persistence and hybrid genres) it’s the players and the world itself that are generating the new and fresh environment.

I don’t quote further because he basically explains one of those ideas I’ve continued to tinker with till now. What Dave called “Interlocking Game System”. Exactly my plan on my dream mmorpg. Adding aspects coming from different genres: FPS, RTS and wargames. Everything put together in a cohesive way and not just independent layers (a similar debate that rised when commenting the “space addition” to SWG).

So I discover again that my ideas are nowhere new. But why I feel them so interesting? Why noone with the resources I’ll never have isn’t trying to go toward that?

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