Goals (Just Forget the Poll...sheesh)

Amaranthar

It seems to me that goals can be a big benefit to player stickiness. 
This is actually proven in the level grind design as player's have the prime goal of advancement. 
Gear based on level and gear sets too. 

Collectibles, in their many forms, are another goal that many players like. 

I'm leaving this open for any sort of comments about in-game goals. I think the more then better for any game. 
So lets have it. What kind of goals do you enjoy, what is missing or rarely seen, and opinions on the topic. 

Amaranthar

Poll is screwed up. 
Won't allow first answer to be clicked. 
Tried twice, same result. 

Ahh, got it. Confusing having two places for the question.

Also, clicking the answer doesn't highlight it, but it still works. 

Amaranthar

UO was a great game for players to make their own goals. 
Examples would be:
- Kazola's Tavern, first player owned tavern, run by players using the housing system. 

- The Mage Tower, for mages of course. Not a guild, but a player created effort for training and info sharing. 

Then there were a lot of players who had goals such as:
- keeping their pets alive
- collecting things (rare items)
- collecting event drops (special colored items and anything else that dropped from the events)

Amaranthar

For myself, I had a goal of discovering the hidden things in the game plot-line.

I also enjoyed gaining access to blocked off places and marking runes to them.
This was a bug using the teleport spell to get to a spot that wasn't actually supposed to have access, through a "hole" in the land or walls. Buggy stuff, but there were a number of players who did this for various reasons, including spying. 

Then there were other things that were strange, usually bugs if not always. Even knowing they were almost certainly bugs, or incomplete stuff, I still enjoyed testing things out to make sure. 

cameltosis

When playing MMORPGs, I usually follow the same set of goals:

1) Get the "toolbox"

By this, I mean unlocking all skills and specs for my main character. I hate playing with a half-finished character so unlocking everything is always my number one goal. Doing so then allows me to play the game the way I want to. This goal is usually pretty easy: just level up through the game. I tend not to be able to enjoy the game much until I have achieved this goal.

2) Achieve Mastery

This is all about learning how to play my character to it's fullest. This begins during the leveling process but only really gets fun at endgame, once I've got the full toolbox. I'll generally start with PvE, going through the usual solo -> group -> raid process, then I'll move onto PvP and make sure I can play my character to it's fullest there too. This isn't about gear, purely about me as a player being able to play my character.

3) External Progression

Once I have achieved mastery of my character, I'll then move onto more external goals, like setting up a house, building a business empire, running a guild or whatever else the game offers. In most themeparks, this usually just means leveling some alts so that I have all the different crafting aspects covered, but in a more sandbox environment this goal tends to drive a lot of my gameplay decisions over the long term.

these three arent necessarily mutually exclusive, I will obviously attempt to master my character during leveling, just as I'll start building my empire during leveling. It's more of a focus thing - I wont really put much effort into alts, or crafting, or anything else until I've gotten my first toon to endgame and started the mastery process.

Amaranthar

cameltosis said:

When playing MMORPGs, I usually follow the same set of goals:

1) Get the "toolbox"

By this, I mean unlocking all skills and specs for my main character. I hate playing with a half-finished character so unlocking everything is always my number one goal. Doing so then allows me to play the game the way I want to. This goal is usually pretty easy: just level up through the game. I tend not to be able to enjoy the game much until I have achieved this goal.

2) Achieve Mastery

This is all about learning how to play my character to it's fullest. This begins during the leveling process but only really gets fun at endgame, once I've got the full toolbox. I'll generally start with PvE, going through the usual solo -> group -> raid process, then I'll move onto PvP and make sure I can play my character to it's fullest there too. This isn't about gear, purely about me as a player being able to play my character.

3) External Progression

Once I have achieved mastery of my character, I'll then move onto more external goals, like setting up a house, building a business empire, running a guild or whatever else the game offers. In most themeparks, this usually just means leveling some alts so that I have all the different crafting aspects covered, but in a more sandbox environment this goal tends to drive a lot of my gameplay decisions over the long term.

these three arent necessarily mutually exclusive, I will obviously attempt to master my character during leveling, just as I'll start building my empire during leveling. It's more of a focus thing - I wont really put much effort into alts, or crafting, or anything else until I've gotten my first toon to endgame and started the mastery process.

Yeah, I understand what you mean about focus. 

Do you have a specific kind of crafting you prefer in your business empire? I understand that if you do, then you'd fill in around that with related crafts. 

Housing, any specific desires there? 
I always wanted a Mages Mansion with library and fireplace, and then build the rest of the house around that. I have always wanted NPC hirelings in my mansion, including guards, but I have yet to see a game that provides for a complete "household" in that regard. 
It would be cool to have a butler that could actually fetch things (from a defined chest or something, maybe a pantry) for a player. And a chef for cooking, etc. 

cameltosis

Amaranthar said:

cameltosis said:

Yeah, I understand what you mean about focus. 

Do you have a specific kind of crafting you prefer in your business empire? I understand that if you do, then you'd fill in around that with related crafts. 

Housing, any specific desires there? 
I always wanted a Mages Mansion with library and fireplace, and then build the rest of the house around that. I have always wanted NPC hirelings in my mansion, including guards, but I have yet to see a game that provides for a complete "household" in that regard. 
It would be cool to have a butler that could actually fetch things (from a defined chest or something, maybe a pantry) for a player. And a chef for cooking, etc. 

With business empires, I am more into management of that empire, rather than the hands-on work. I really enjoy setting up automated production lines (like in Dyson Sphere or Satisfactory), I like the creative aspect to it, as well as the numbers side. Closest an MMO has gotten has been SWG with it's miners and factories.

But if I'm forced to pick, blacksmithing is my preferred crafting specialisation :-)

Housing is a very tricky one. There are three things I want from any housing system:

1) Creativity

2) A gameplay purpose

3) Some sort of social aspect

None of the MMOs I've played achieved these things, so housing is usually just glorified storage. But, I love what I see from the survival genre, I think MMORPGs could learn a lot from the gather-craft-build gameplay loop of games like ARK or Rust or Valheim. This is part of the reason I still have hope for CU: its got a really innovative building system.

Amaranthar

cameltosis said:

Amaranthar said:

cameltosis said:

Yeah, I understand what you mean about focus. 

Do you have a specific kind of crafting you prefer in your business empire? I understand that if you do, then you'd fill in around that with related crafts. 

Housing, any specific desires there? 
I always wanted a Mages Mansion with library and fireplace, and then build the rest of the house around that. I have always wanted NPC hirelings in my mansion, including guards, but I have yet to see a game that provides for a complete "household" in that regard. 
It would be cool to have a butler that could actually fetch things (from a defined chest or something, maybe a pantry) for a player. And a chef for cooking, etc. 

With business empires, I am more into management of that empire, rather than the hands-on work. I really enjoy setting up automated production lines (like in Dyson Sphere or Satisfactory), I like the creative aspect to it, as well as the numbers side. Closest an MMO has gotten has been SWG with it's miners and factories.

But if I'm forced to pick, blacksmithing is my preferred crafting specialisation :-)

Housing is a very tricky one. There are three things I want from any housing system:

1) Creativity

2) A gameplay purpose

3) Some sort of social aspect

None of the MMOs I've played achieved these things, so housing is usually just glorified storage. But, I love what I see from the survival genre, I think MMORPGs could learn a lot from the gather-craft-build gameplay loop of games like ARK or Rust or Valheim. This is part of the reason I still have hope for CU: its got a really innovative building system.

I think you're absolutely right about house construction. UO had a great custom house system (they added it later on, after starting the game with a set of premade houses that you just plopped down). But they didn't have the gathering of resources for the houses. Just a GP cost per 4X8 wall section, and flooring and other extras. 

I'd love a system where you can customize, add on to, tear down, add floors, change wood walls to stone walls, etc. 

Tools to enhance social aspects are very important. Same for player run cities. 

Decoration is another part of this too. Player will want to make changes to their houses/castles over time and investing time and effort into that in fun ways keeps it going. 

All of this construction and socialization is a big step in "goals" and that feeling of ownership-investment in the game. Great for retention and great for the players. 

mekhere

"I'd love a system where you can customize, add on to, tear down, add floors, change wood walls to stone walls, etc. "

I too miss this feature in a game. I wish they would bring it back. Did they have home shows in uo?

Amaranthar

mekhere said:

"I'd love a system where you can customize, add on to, tear down, add floors, change wood walls to stone walls, etc. "

I too miss this feature in a game. I wish they would bring it back. Did they have home shows in uo?

UO didn't have the ability to add on and widen your "plot" beyond the limits, and they didn't have requirements for resources. These are things I'd like to see in an otherwise great game. 

I don't know about "home shows." I know there were forum posts where people showed off their homes and decorations. There might have been a forum dedicated to home design, but I don't know if I recall that right. 

I had two accounts and found side by side places on "Horse Island", the island with the secret tunnels under it (unused event stuff). 
I made a double complex with a temple-like library on one side and a mansion on the other, and using illusionary imagery I made it look like they were connected as one super large structure. 
Then UO added those teleport tiles in the Veteran Rewards, and I used a set of those to make it seem almost like you were walking between the two sides. 

I also discovered that the small golden statuette of the lady (another Veteran Reward, I think) could be dropped on a pillar tile, locked down and raised, and looked like it was carved right into the pillar, and gilded. I only had one though, with two pillars. That was pretty cool though. I never found a twin for that as they were very hard to find for sale. 

Lots of players wrote their own poems and literature in UO, and I tried to buy copies from them for my library. I also wrote some Lore stuff myself. Plus a collection of all of the UO books. 
It was a pretty good library collection, but not as good as I wanted. 

Angrakhan

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Amaranthar

I think a cool "goal" would be for Tamers, where they can train up their Pets to Maxed, and then establish a telepathic link with them, allowing the Tamer to play as the Pet, switching back and forth at will. They could explore or adventure as that Pet, if they wanted to. 
There's a variety of ways to set up this system, and it could be used for Character families or Hirelings, too. 

My Butler could be a thief in the night. lol

Amaranthar

How about Gem Cutters as a skill (maybe Tinkers?), where yo build it up, find or buy unusually large Gemstones, and if successful in cutting it, and depending on the cut quality, it can hold magical spells with a boost to power. 

If it's not automatic success, always with a chance for failure, I think this can serve as a very competitive market and a good goal-oriented thing for players. 

Amaranthar

How about Tamers being able to breed their Pets for more powerful, or otherwise better versions, of their Pets? 
Build a breeding stable (goes with housing), put two like Pets in there for a few days, and see what comes out. 
Maybe even a cross-breed of two similar Pets ((-lion and tiger (or gryphon), for example-)). 

Amaranthar

Whell, I edited and added "Poll" to the topic header to attract votes and the poll I had set up disappeared. 

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