Dynamic Content

I'm going to talk a bit about Dynamic Content, but I'm going to keep it fairly "big picture" for now. I'll discuss specific content and their pros and cons in different posts.

I played original EQ (EverQuest) back around the time they implemented their instanced dungeon system and AA (Alternate Advancment) points.

The dungeons were infinitely repeatable quests that you could do at almost any level, and each time you did one, it would be different than any other time before. You could pick from a handful of locations, adventure types, and difficulties, and a brand new instance of the dungeon would be generated somewhat randomly for your group. It made for a pretty dynamic experience - each time you ran one of these dungeons, the layout would be different, the monsters would be spawned in different places, there were sometimes loot chests, sometimes rare mob types mixed in. Each time you completed one of these adventures, you'd gain different points depending on the type of dungeon it was, that you could spend to purchase some nice rewards.

Alternate Advancement was a new way to customize and advance your character beyond the regular levels. Any character at or above a respectable level could start directing some or all of the experience they earned while playing towards AA points. Once you built up some of these, you could start spending them to unlock new abilities, increase your stats, or improve your character in some other way. This gave players another reason to 'grind' (ie. play the game), while customizing their character somewhat.

MMOs have generally moved away from these kinds of systems recently, and I'm not sure why. The typical MMO advancement system uses levels, and the typical content system uses quests. The result of this is that any one character that you make has a fairly limited amount of content that they can run through. Once you have completed all the quests and reached the level cap, there's not much more you can do. There's usually some "end-game" content, and I'll get into my opinions on that kind of content in another post, but simply noting that it's usually pretty static content aswell should suffice for now.

A big problem comes when the content takes more time for the developers to build than it does for the players to play through it. Every time World of Warcraft (WoW) releases an expansion, the hard-core players all reach the new level cap within a few days, and they've completed all the new dungeons and whatever other content was added, within a week, maybe two. How long did it take for Blizzard to make that content? Oh, probably atleast 6 months. Obviously that's an issue.

What needs to be done? Developers should start thinking about making more dynamic content that is replayable many times before it gets boring. Here are a few ways this can be done:

1. Randomness. Instancing can allow random dungeon layouts as I've already mentioned, but this can be taken farther and outside instances. Monsters with random spawn points and pathing is another good one.

2. Repeatable. If a player likes a certain dungeon or quest, let them run through it more than once. There's no point in limiting the life-span of your content if the players are having fun.

3. Scalable. Why lock your player out of experiencing half your game's content just because they leveled up while doing the other half? Content that doesn't get played is a waste. Scaling difficulty to the player (and their group) is important too since it's no longer fun if there's no challenge in it at higher levels.

4. Player-driven. This is a pretty big one. It's mostly about giving your players the right tools. Player vs. Player combat never gets dull since it's different every fight, by nature. Let the player build their own environment and content - customizable houses, player-made quests, etc. A properly built crafting system with supporting economy systems can almost be a game on it's own.

5. Customization. Most players will customize the look of their characters to some degree, and some will spend a significant amount of time on it, giving more ways to do so is great. Other ways players can typically customize their characters are with talent points to pick out new abilities or modifications to existing ones. Swapping out skills, trying out new tactics, different stat distributions, different gear, anything. It all extends the life of your game.

There are so many ways these kinds of things can be done. Game designers just have to learn to think outside the box of static, level-based quests, and mix it up a bit.