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The mother of invention: Innovation in MMOs at NYCC - Part 1
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DC Universe Online
Even if we've decided not to face the facts, it's clear that rival developers have: World of Warcraft has become nearly synonymous with massively multiplayer online gaming. The great emigration back to WoW with the release of Wrath of the Lich King may be a clear illustration for the consumer and the critic, but after speaking with developers at New York Comic Con this past weekend, it was clear that they'd come to this realization long ago. More importantly, they've come up with ways to stop it. Or at least, that's the pitch.
Over the next few days, I'll be examining a few of the MMOs that were shown in the exhibition hall, and looking at how they plan on secreting away with WoW's loyal fan bas. The tour of duty starts with...
DC Universe Online
When philosopher René Descartes' finished his studies, he was left confused. He effectively thought "That's it? That's what people are confused about? Don't they see the answer?" Speaking with Oge Young, Producer on Sony Online Entertainment's DC Universe Online, revealed a man in much the same attitude. To him it didn't seem hard to find an audience alongside WoW's. The keywords he kept going back to? Action. Physics. License.
Oge accepted appraisals of SOE's forth coming superhero title as being "similar to Crackdown," but went even a step further, comparing the game to forthcoming Prototype. "This is an RPG, but it's also an action game. You won't stand in front of each other watching attack animations play."
It shouldn't be too surprising that SOE is laying on a healthy smattering of action key words. DCUO is poised to hit both the PC and PS3 platforms (and before anyone asks, Oge was clear that it was a done-when-its-done proposition. They're committed to shipping a finished product.) That second platform is inhabited by games like God of War and, by the time DCUO releases, the superhero action game inFamous. The player base will be expecting a certain degree of comic book action out of their comic book game.
Again and again, Oge and the other SOE employees suggested to players of the pre-alpha build that they toss benches, cars, and even buses at each other. This was perhaps best illustrated when the pre-made, player controlled villain "Kid Frostbite" zapped hero "Afterburner" with a freeze ray, locking him into a big block of ice before tossing him away into the skyline of Metropolis.
The demo available at the con focused on giving players quickly recharging powers (which are organized by set, with staff there saying that players can pick from multiple sets as they reach higher experience levels.) This meant that there was little waiting around for powers to come back into play, and the action was constant. Even the travel powers, a hallmark of MMOs and a defining feature of superhero settings, were PHYSICAL. Superspeed allowed one hero to sprint up the walls of buildings. Flight includes the ability to boost into high speeds, sacrificing some control precision. Moving, fighting, being in this world... it felt like an action game.
Even the organization of missions seems to suggest a push towards open world mayhem and away from mushroom collection and bandit slaying. The segment of the world presented to players at NYCC was a huge chunk of Metropolis, the action focusing around the S.T.A.R. Labs building. Heroes were alerted that big-bad Doomsday was tearing apart the interior of those very labs, and to get in and stop him they had to take out a certain number of the attacking forces.
This might seem a lot like standard MMO questing, but it differs in two key ways. First, the quest you're performing is also constantly active in the world itself. The NPCs (both heroic and villainous) were constantly doing battle around the location, making the locale feel like a constant siege. Second, the reward is different. Instead of rewarding your flower picking with some XP and a little dough, the real reward from this sort of "Get n of X" mission is the instanced content that follows: in this case a showdown with Doomsday, and with backup from the big guy himself, Superman.
And that's where things get a little murky. After blasting commandos with Afterburner's laser rays, tossing a car onto an incoming set of spies, and atomic-upper-cutting a villain played by a player elsewhere in the DCUO booth, it was easy to feel comfortable with the "kinetic" (another keyword) play. Expectations were high for the Doomsday fight. And to be frank, it was a let down (and a peak behind the curtain of design.) The combat on the outside could be fast paced because things died quickly. Even against the other player character, power blasts and physical slams sent the characters flying down the road. But inside of S.T.A.R. Labs, watching Superman square off against Doomsday was a lot like watching a warrior fight a rat in Everquest circa 1999.
Yes, that's harsh. And it ought be. Inside that computer lab, the entire vibe of the game was betrayed by the Oge's final selling point: "License." The truth is, being tied to a license is a benefit and a liability, just ask BioWare. Being stuck inside of a continuity, especially one as storied as DC's, means making fans happy and remaining internally consistent while still trying to be FUN. Staring at Doomsday swing and hit Superman, and then Superman swing and hit Doomsday as Afterburner cleared the room of no-name goons, is, well, correct in one sense. The up and comer would be left with clean up duty when facing a menace that almost killed Supes. But in the more important sense, in the sense that this is a video game, it wasn't fun, and it wasn't satisfying.
After dropping all of the henchmen, the final showdown with Doomsday left the player character expending all of his powers in a row, then waiting for them to recharge, standing or hovering a few feet away from the massive grey titan. Like the old man in the booth revealed to be Oz, all of that fast-paced action was shown to be window dressing. Dial the numbers up high enough and the physics-based combat just doesn't matter. Throwing a table at Doomsday isn't like throwing one at a row of thugs. And slowly watching his health drain isn't like sending a group of incoming peace keepers flying. This was not an action game. It was slow. It was tedious. It was button pressing with no real "play." It was an MMO in the traditional sense.
"In the traditional sense," in the sense that René Descartes might use to insult men who believed that the health of body and mind was determined by the four humours.
I saw behind the curtain of DCUO in that moment, and in honesty, that feels a little unfair. So here, look behind mine. The role of the critic is not to whittle away at a thing until some universal value rating is found. Certainly, a reader should be moved to some mindset by these impressions, but what we do as writers is also to stimulate creation and challenge the artist. The game is pre-alpha. That doesn't mean that critics should go easy on its design. If anything, now is the time to be vocal because things can still change.
SOE is clearly passionate, and are on the right track to creating a game that embodies DC's world and characters: the key be figuring out how to embody DC gameplay, which is something that simply doesn't exist yet. More than that, we'll see in DCUO an attempt to overcome WoW by combining a bankable license with frenetic action (a feature that I believe SOE can still pull off.) Whether or not the PS3's audience will hop on board or not is yet to be seen, but we might get a preview of how console players react to MMOs with the next game on the docket...
NEXT UP: Bill Roper and Champions Online!
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