Scaling Content

One of the major attractions of MMORPGs is that they offer cooperative game-play, usually in the form of a group of adventurers battling against monsters. But solo play is also very popular. Since a group is inherently stronger than a single character, games trying to please everybody have segregated content into group and solo content. But the result is far from optimal. Is there a better way?

In current games like EQ2, WoW, or Guild Wars, there is some content designed for solo play, and other content designed for group play. EQ2 uses a system of putting ^ symbols behind a monsters level, to show whether it is meant for solo players, small groups, or full groups. WoW has the notion of "elite" monsters, which are designed for groups, and all instanced dungeons fall in that category. Guild Wars has mission zones designed for groups, and even displays a big warning sign if you try to enter them alone.

While this offers some content for every possible style of play, it still isn't totally satisfying. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, and especially solo players feel "excluded" from content that is available only to groups. By the time a solo player has advanced enough in levels to be able to fight a group-only monster, the rewards aren't useful to him any more. Groups fighting solo-monsters pose a bit less of a problem, but sometimes being in a group of 5, each looking for 10 orc scalps, means that you have to kill 5 times as many orcs as you would need to if you were alone. And there is a certain risk that the group is simply too powerful for the solo-content orcs, making the fights less interesting, although one can overcome that by going for higher level targets.

Another problem is that game developers cannot design content for every possible mode of play. Beyond solo and full groups, there are couples playing together, people regularly playing with one or two friends, and guilds wanting to conduct raids with 10, 20, or more people. Instead of forcing the players to go with a specific group size if they want to experience a specific content, it would be better to let players first choose whatever configuration they want to play, and then scale the content accordingly.

A game that makes a first effort to do so is City of Heroes. The type and level of the monsters in each mission instance are predetermined, but their number scales with the number of players in the group entering the instance. That works pretty well, unless you have players quitting the group in the middle of a mission. The advantage is that you can do the same mission alone or with as many friends you currently want to play with, up to the maximum group size, and always get a challenging encounter. And as an added advantage CoH has the sidekick system, which enables you to include friends of lower levels in your group in a meaningful way.

Guild Wars is trying to enable smaller groups by allowing you to pad your group with NPC henchmen. That is better than nothing, but doesn't work quite as well. The artificial intelligence and level of the henchmen is often lacking. You often end up with the combined disadvantages of solo and group play, instead of the best of both worlds.

In my opinion the ideal game would have content scaled to whatever group size, from single player to guild raid. That should be easy enough to do, at least in the instanced dungeons. The more people there are in the group of players entering the dungeon, the more monsters there are to oppose them. And increasing the numbers of opponents isn't the only way to scale up the difficulty level to fit the group. Monsters could gain levels or just receive tougher statistics when more players oppose them. If that is well balanced, the overall challenge should remain about the same. And all of the content of the game would be available to all of its players, no matter how many friends they have.

This article has also been posted on Grimwell.com
- posted by Tobold @ 8:24 AM Permanent Link