Player Consequences: Pervasive Map Features

There are a lot of reasons for the increasing popularity of MMOs and the amount of game developers who are entering into the market. I personally think that MMOs with their rich and complex fantasy worlds have a huge advantage over most single player games. There are a few exceptions like Baldur's Gate and Oblivion, but in general if you want to experience a completely different world then you need a MMO. I think this goes back to the days when online fantasy games were text based and developers tried their best to create immersion through good lore and storytelling.

In fact a lot of players enjoy the immersion in MMOs and have fun exploring the hidden areas in the game. Going into the unknown has always had an attraction for some people and history is filled with the names of famous explorers. However, in modern times the world doesn't really contain that much which is unknown and it will probably be a while before we get to another planet. Thus virtual worlds offer a false, but satisfying sense of exploration. Not everyone wants to be an explorer when playing a game and the majority of players tend to fall more into the achiever player type.

This is why there is often so much disagreement over map features in modern MMOs. When the early text based games came out as MUDS there were no maps included. Everything had to be hand drawn and giving other players hints about the location of quest items was frowned upon. This frustrated a lot of people, but it was the golden age of exploration for others. It was quick lived though as the popularity of the internet start producing websites that specialized in all kinds of topics, even MMOs. It quickly became clear that more players would rather look things up then search around randomly.

I know my first experience looking things up online was with a map site called EQ Atlas. It was a very old fashion website that used basic drawing software to map out camp spots and zone lines. It became very popular back in its heyday since classic EverQuest released without any mapping tools. Players could easily get lost and it was often hard to find the zone entrance and exit locations. After a number of years, the developers at SOE finally introduced tools which allowed players to create their own in game maps. However, instead of spending time mapping out zones most players simply downloaded popular map packages from sites like Mapfiend.

This has been the standard for MMOs for awhile now. Information about the game can be found through third party websites and developers neither discourage nor encourage players to use them. This has kept the explorers happy since they can still discover things for themselves, while other players are free to engage in the metagame. I personally like this compromise since I almost never look anything up the first time I go into a new zone. On the second of third time through I give into my inner achiever and look online to see if I missed anything important.

This compromise between explorers and achievers has been broken recently with many new MMOs opting to include as much metagame information as possible. This partly has to do with the new trend of appealing to casual gamers but that's not the only reason. MMOs have long had a war with predatory RMT companies that use their games to make a profit. Within the last few years these companies have bought out several map and item database sites which have to make some game companies nervous. Thus a lot of developers are responding by making their games automatically map out quests objectives and even track hints and clues the player may have received.

I have recently been playing Age of Conan and Tabula Rasa and both games employ a quest tracking system that includes this automatic mapping out of objectives. At first I thought it was a very cool feature, but it started to make my game experience feel like it was on rails. While I don't miss running around like a chicken with my head cut off, I also don't feel like playing tourist in my games. After entering a new zone and getting several quests my map shouldn't look like a highlighted to-do list. MMOs seem to be losing their sense of adventure and I think these new map features are contributing to the problem.

Besides making it very hard to remain an explorer, the overuse of map features also seems to be encouraging lazy quest design. There is less reason for developers to come up with compelling quest lore when the objectives are automatically marked on the map. After all don't most people simply skip the dialogue with the NPC quest givers anyways? I've had several instances where the quest dialogue actually gave directions which contradicted the objective marked on the map. What was supposed to be a helpful feature has now made the quest more time consuming since you now have to check out both locations.

MMO design usually doesn't move backwards as Vanguard showed us last year. Once a newer and more user friendly feature comes out, most MMOs are going to incorporate it no matter what us old geezer gamers think. And honestly I wouldn't want these new map features to disappear entirely. I think they will be a godsend when I start creating alts and revisiting old zones. However, I don't think there is a need to force players to use them the first time around. Players should have the option to do things the hard way if they want. This can be done by simply allowing players to click off some of the map features or developers could get more creative and try making a map system that appeals to all player types.

I would like to see a game that uses a fog of war feature that reveals the game map as your character explores it. Then quest objectives that are in the revealed area could automatically be mapped out for the player. This would encourage exploration, but not force players to remember the exact location of every quest objective. I know Warhammer is playing around with something similar with its Tome of Knowledge feature. This quest journal on crack will supposedly keep track of exploration, questing, and even reveal lore as players progress through the game. This could be Paul Barnett getting to me, but this sounds like exactly what I'm looking for in a mapping system. It certainly would be better then these straight forward "x" marks the spot map systems.

	Gabriel Runfeldt has been following MMOs ever since he stumbled onto an EverQuest addiction by accident. He eventually managed to fight it off but caught a case of armchair designer syndrome in the process. Now you can catch his mad ravings here at Player Consequences. You can even contact him at gabriel.runfeldt AT weblogsinc.com