Ever since I started this blog I’ve wanted to try to tackle the challenge of endgame raid design, not design an actual raid but rather the concept of raids. Even if I don’t foresee a future where I’d actually do that, as a purely intellectual exercise I still think it’s worth a try because as raids stand right now I believe they still need to be improved upon.
So why raids in particular and not other endgame features? Because raids are the one feature that has the most impact on the endgame of an MMO and because they are, I feel, the most distinguishing feature of MMOs. A lot of the activities proposed in an MMO can be done in other types of games but raids are the one thing you cannot easily find elsewhere and they still are the main reason many people are playing MMOs in the first place.
A note about my method
Some of you will ask where and how I got my information. First of all when I set out to do this I was interested mainly in finding three things, what people expect out of a raid, what features they liked and what features they didn’t like. I worked hard on getting information from players of multiple games so I could see broad patterns and not only get what WoW or Lotro players love. I’ll say right now that I was really surprised to find out that the reasons and expectations given were pretty much always the same no matter what game is being played.
As to where I got the information I got it a bit from all over the place so I hope you’ll forgive me for not listing it. A lot of it is forums and I don’t want broken links all over the place and it was hard to keep track of all that I read. I searched games and guild forums, fan websites, blogs, I asked people directly, I asked them on this blog… I just grabbed whatever I could.
The big expectation we have toward a raid
Raids as we know them in MMOs are the online versions of single players rpg endgame dungeons. Those dungeons were often the fortresses of the main villain, full of deadly enemies and traps, it’s where we would learn the details of the game plot, face and defeat the villain after an epic boss battle and save the world at the very last-minute.
And to this day this is what we want out of an MMO raid. We put a lot of time an effort preparing ourselves to storm the castle walls, we study the strats, we shine our armor, we fine tune our abilities, our skills and out teamwork so we can take down the guy that has been messing with us during the whole game if not multiple games and expansions.
So this is our big expectation toward a raid and its most single important feature. A raid needs to be a proper ending to a particular storyline we have been working on for so long. It needs to feel special, it needs to deliver epic battles and when we come out at the end we need to feel like we’ve accomplished something special. When we raid we bring our A game to the raid and we expect in return the raid to be the pinnacle of what a game can deliver.
According to many, this is the best raid ever.
The three elements a raid need
When I asked on my blog which were your favorites raids and why you all have answered pretty much what I was reading everywhere else about why players find a particular raid fun. To my surprise, it turns out to be rather simpler than I thought it would be when I began. Everyone has been citing mostly the same three reasons for why they loved a particular raid and usually all three together.
1. The raid needs to tell a story
Tying into what we expect from a raid, we want our raids to matter and to tie into the greater story. Glorified instances or obvious fillers between the meaningful content have all been thought of as bad.
2. The fights have to be about skill
Memorable boss fights is another of the reason mentioned all the time as to why a raid was great. If we’re a bit more specific, players really remembers fights that had fun mechanics to them. For example, Shade of Aran is remembered fondly by many for its famous “Don’t move phase”. What struck is that every single time the fights and mechanics that were given as example all relied on learning a particular dance or relied on player skill, not gear, not perfect play.
Simply, we want to be able to beat a boss because we mastered its strategy and tactics, not because we can push our buttons really hard.
Good news everyone! We love this fight!
3. Exclusivity
This is the element that turns out to be a complete surprise and it’s not exactly the easiest to express so please forgive me if I have a bit of trouble explaining it.
In our minds, raids are special places and we expect and even want that little extra work that make the place special. It doesn’t have to be complicated, it can be a simple attunement quest or a special boss you only see if you do the raid under X time but there’s need to be a little something extra. There needs to be a little something extra that says “This is a raid and not just another instance”.
What a raids needs to avoid
This post is already running long so I’ll cut to the chase here and say simply that raids needs to avoid the opposites of the elements above. Storywise, a raid cannot be a big instance or a filler between two patches, it needs to be relevant. Likewise, avoid gear checks or encounters tuned to tight that any little mistake will result in a wipe. We want to be rewarded for learning the fights, not punished because someone missed one keystroke in a 10 minutes fight. As for exclusivity I think it’s simply not forgetting to include it. Like I said it doesn’t need to be complicated or long, it just needs to be there.
So what should we change to the current endgame?
When I set out to write this I had envisioned complicated changes, technical stuff that would take multiple posts to explain and finely tuned details but after having done all this research I find myself reaching a very simple solution. A simple solution but one that would probably change the face of endgame if it was to be done.
Let’s remove gear out of the equation.
I can already feel the initial silence, then the low rumble as people forms ideas and finally the outburst at the heresy I’m proposing but let’s take a moment here.
Of all the reasons mentioned as to why people loved a particular raid, whether on Elitist Jerks or on a casual family site, gear has never ever been mentioned as one of the reasons why a raid was great. While some people fondly remember a drop for a number of reason, it’s never what makes a particular raid the best ever.
Likewise, fights that are used solely as gear checks are almost all reviled. They’re seen as boring facerolls at best and frustrating progression walls at worst. People don’t feel rewarded because they had the ability to equip gear, they feel rewarded for playing their characters.
So I’m not saying to remove gear from MMOs, I’m saying it needs to be a lot less relevant in the design of raids. Gear should not be used as a gating mechanism and it should not be the primary component in your ability to beat a boss.
I know that there’s a lot of reasons, mostly about content pacing and rewarding players and they’re probably not entirely wrong but if, like me, you believe that endgame needs to be improved and that we need to get out of the old model that we’ve had for the past ten years then I think this is probably the best way to do so.
There’s going to be a part 2 to this post where I want to go more into details about what would our current MMOs look like without gear being an issue at endgame but I’d like to see your comments first and what you all think about this.
Think about what I wrote above, that we expect raids to be the pinnacle of what a game can offer, that in the end it’s about story, interesting boss fights and that feeling of being somewhere special that’s not easily accessible. Gear doesn’t play into that equation and in fact can be detrimental to it.
So, what about we get rid of gear as an endgame mechanic?
A couple of games are moving towards lessening the impact of gear on certain facets. WoW’s challenge modes are a good example, as is GW2, where the dungeon rewards are primarily cosmetic in nature and can be matched stat-wise through other means (so I am told). Neither of these games, however, has removed gear requirements from raiding (GW2 does not have raids). I don’t think WoW ever will, because a majority of the game is built around grinding out each small stat increase. If GW2 implemented raids, I think they could successfully pull it off. From the numbers of people I see playing the game, I have no doubt they would be successful.
Another problem hindering gear neutrality in WoW is that so much of WoW is built around the idea that gear=ability. Think about in Wrath when pugs would ask your Gear Score, or in Cata (and probably Mists) when the LFG tool gated people based on the level of their gear. It would be very difficult to break 10 million people’s long-lasting perceptions.
After the initial “No Way! We need gear!” I think it could actually work. They would still need some sort of gating or attunement to make sure people are still learning the ropes before they dive into a new raid. And I think you would lose a segment of folks who really enjoy the min/maxing and figuring out their itemization. But still, imagine a WoW where you had exactly the same incentive to run old content as new. What would that look like? It would be interesting to see!
You can definitely get rid of gear rewards… as long as you replace it with some other form of meaningful character progression reward. Gear is just the easiest and most obvious form of character progression.
“Raiding is its own reward” will -definitely- not fly with the majority of the current raiding population.
You never really hear about gear being what made a raid great in WoW because it is just a given. Ulduar is the best raid WoW’s ever had. If that place had no gear dropping (without some other reward substitute) it would have been a tremendous flop since nearly no one would go.
As a quick follow up.
Examples of non-gear progression rewards would include things that give you a social status boost. Such as some form of wealth or visible clearly increase in player standing.
These could come in the form of public leader boards.. or some sort of public.. trophy room? It could even all be summed up into guild accomplishments. The best guild on the server gets the coolest guild lodge that all of the less-skilled guilds can “ooh and ahh” at. Could give them better trade skill resources or who knows what.
The important thing is; if you get rid of the gear reward make sure you replace it with something else. =)
You’re right about the need for reward and it’s something I wanted to talk about in part 2 so your ideas are most welcome. LIke you I think that no rewards at all would be a terrible idea.
You can also add in here character progression as an issue. I do know designers have said that we want to keep progression with our characters at end game.
The thing is that gear so far has been the only answer and I believe that we’re smart enough to figure out something else.
Caught this post on the melting pot. Nicely done. Overall, however, I have to disagree.
I think gear is EXACTLY what raiding needs. One of the biggest draws for me when I did raid seriously was the reward of new and interesting loot. As you mention, exclusivity does play a part in making a raid memorable, but I think that element of exclusivity can also come from being one of the few people with rare loot drops.
Even in games where I didn’t raid, that allure and awe of meeting someone who had braved the deepest deeps, taken on the craziest challenges, and succeeded helped cement a culture of raiding as being something more exclusive than just tackling the average dungeon.
Likewise, I think gear can help tell a story. After all, loot often reflects the lore and aesthetic of the dungeon in which it is acquired, which helps to link you and your character to that story in a meaningful way. That epic encounter didn’t just include an interesting story with a challenging boss, but it also let you take a piece of it with you after claiming your victory.
I will agree with you though that the importance of gear should be relaxed significantly moving forward. The numbers shouldn’t be as big a deal and we shouldn’t have to go through a myriad of poorly thought out gear checks to get to content worth consuming.
I agree with your point and remember being in Shattrath while leveling to 70, seeing people in sweet gear (either raiding or PVP) summoning their flying mounts and saying, “OOh, I want to be that guy.”
Most of your point, however, can be covered by gear rewards that are primarily cosmetic rather than stat-based. I can show off my shiny new armor that only comes from one place and establish that I have bested that challenge and hit the story points as well.
Like you suggested, there is probably a happy medium where the power increase is minimal, but the player still feels handsomely rewarded.
As long as you don’t move purely to cosmetic items as the reward. Even with a minimal increase in potency, I think it is necessary to have some change in power via stats. I don’t think exclusivity can truly stand on its own.
What might be better actually is just separating stats from cosmetics entirely, but rewarding you with both during raiding. Imagine the jewelcrafting system from WoW as the ONLY stats on a particular item, and then higher level content might have more slots, unique bonuses, or special modifiers along with unique and cool cosmetic design. You could even keep the jewels in which you slot things with constantly advancing by having raids drop materials to craft bigger and better ones. They would only be slight upgrades compared to moving from Tier 1 to Tier 2 of a particular expansion, but they would noticeable enough that every serious raiding would want them.
But yeah, as far as the point we both agree, I think it is evident by Warcraft’s design moving from expansion to expansion that stat bloat is a serious issue. I skipped most of Cataclysm and after a brief return to see how things had changed, I had no real sense of what the numbers meant (yet again) since Health and Damage numbers were so absurd compared to what I had previously known. Even within a particular expansion, moving from one tier to another represents some pretty serious and annoying gaps in stat potency.
On point article here:
http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/11/06/the-soapbox-the-problem-with-power-creep-and-progression/