Under The Hood: Of Titles, Badges, and Achievements
Filed under: Game mechanics, Under the Hood, Consoles
Say what you will about achievement points on the Xbox 360. They may cheapen the experience, or reduce elements of skill down to raw numbers, but anyone who has ever played a 360 knows how addictive the little "Achievement unlocked!" message is. So what happens when you toss that into an MMO? Titles.
It seems that a recent trend in MMOs is "titles". When they first debuted in the mainstream with City of Heroes, they didn't do much. All they did was add bragging rights for the person who has them, and a displayable title above the person's head. They were worthless (Well, mostly worthless). And most of the titles in CoX are still worthless.
"Oh, I killed 200 Circle of Thorn members. I've got that sweet new title."
Some MMOs are actually starting to change things up now, though, including the pioneers of the "Titles" system. Getting the exploration titles in City of Heroes/Villains will enable your Supergroup to teleport to that map from your Supergroup base. Getting certain titles in Guild Wars will allow you to increase your holding cap on faction. Getting all titles in an area in Tabula Rasa gets you a huge experience bonus (noticing a trend here? NCsoft developers seem to love the use of titles).
This focus both hurts and helps MMOs. From a business standpoint, it's an excellent model. It extends game life and adds addiction to an already very addictive game. More people, playing more often and for longer, equals more money for the company in subscription fees, and this trend of increased revenue will just keep on rising. "Just 20 more enemies and I'll have this new title," is the mentality here. The problem is, a lot of people focus on getting the titles and not on experiencing the game. When all you are doing is grinding gang members for your worthless new title instead of doing quests for XP and experiencing the story through those quests, you are missing out on the meat of the game.
It's not that I hate titles. Far from it. Titles add longevity to an MMO long after you have exhausted the story and quest content. I'm quite addicted to titles myself, as I am quite the completionist. At the moment, though, the implementation of titles is mostly bad. Instead of giving titles for doing things you were already going to do, (Completing 100 newspaper missions in City of Villains, for example, or completing a quest chain in Tabula Rasa), you get titles for killing X amounts of mob Y and Z.
This also isn't to say that an MMO needs titles to stay addictive and fresh. World of Warcraft has a huge installed player base and there a plenty of successful games that have managed to provide fresh, addictive gameplay without titles (Here's looking at you, Everquest.)
The better way of doing titles, in my opinion, is to always give players titles for just playing the game, and have them affect gameplay more. DarkSpace did this really well, giving you badges which both affect gameplay and give you the gamer "bragging rights" that people seem to covet so much, without making you go grind useless junk. And Lord of the Rings Online is giving players bonuses in the form of Traits earned through Deeds.
So let titles rest, and do some good old questing. It'll be good for you.
Each week James Murff writes Under The Hood, a deeper look at MMO game mechanics and how they affect players, games, and the industry.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-04-2007 @ 3:21PM
gattsuru said...
Well, Tabula Rasa tries to avoid it by making sure that you'd meet the necessary requirements for each title normally just trying to explore the world, complete mission quests, and do a couple rounds of the Control Points. You have to kill a lotta Thrax and Miasma for the first zone's titles, but you'd have to do that anyway to get through the zone, then complete the Mama Miasma, Miasma Goo, and escort through caves from imperial valley quest.
There are a few points where you might end up grinding enemies for a title -- the Stalkers and Beam Mantas in Plains, because I went out of my way to fight them during normal encounters before -- but for a majority of titles, it's more of a reward for simply doing a job you'd want to do anyway.
They also added clone credits (think respec + character copy) as a reward for getting all the titles.
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11-04-2007 @ 9:35PM
James Murff said...
I agree, I think that Tabula Rasa is on the right track with their title system. I think, though, that they need to add some more/different titles (At the moment the current titles are a little lacking) and add new conditions for them.
Oh, and killing 200 Thrax for the Thrax Hunter title is a pain in the arse.
11-04-2007 @ 4:23PM
Adam R said...
Although Blizzard did away with the classic PvP titles in WoW [Grunt, Scout, Grand Marshal, etc], the relatively recent introduction of Arena PvP has brought back titles to a certain extent. I've seen more than a few characters with "Challenger" or "Centurion" [I think that's the one] in front of their names.
I thought that titles for PvP ranks were great, and I must admit I was a little disappointed when they were cropped from the PvP content.
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11-04-2007 @ 9:36PM
James Murff said...
This is something I thought Guild Wars and DAoC did really well, giving titles to players for PvP-based achievements. I was rather disappointed when Blizzard removed the classic ranking system for PvP.
11-04-2007 @ 4:47PM
Athryn said...
Titles in MMOs have been in the "mainstream" for longer than in City of Heroes, and were an integral part of identifying enemies in Dark Age of Camelot. Perhaps when you decide to do in depth articles about the MMO industry, you have a memory of more than just the last 2 years.
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11-04-2007 @ 6:19PM
James Murff said...
By titles here, I'm referring to PvE environment titles (Which DAoC, if I recall, did NOT have. From what I understood DAoC only had RvR titles) which are earnable by player characters.
If I had been including PvP titles I probably would have included the ranking system from WoW which recently got cut. But since I was talking about PvE achievements (Which I do admit, I could have been more clear on), CoX was, as I recall, the first mainstream MMO to have them.
Oh, and CoX is 3 years old, coming on 4.
11-04-2007 @ 5:09PM
Marble said...
I think that titles make a nice addition. They provide a goal for some people who want to put their time in it, and they aren't too hard to implement.
The idea of making titles more usefull would make a lot more people happy though.
But one thing did bother me in this article. City of heroes had titles, but then again...world of warcraft didn't need it. I see them as more of the same. In city of heroes, badges indeed do nothing, except for 'wasting' (note the ') your time. But in world of warcraft it is exactly the same with some of the high end gear.
Sure, it improves your character a bit, but for the rest it is only there for bragging rights.
Money sinks and time wasters will always be there. The most beautiful part is that you can choose what you want to do with them. And you can enjoy them the way they are designed, or you can just let them be.
Greetings, marble
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11-04-2007 @ 5:25PM
Chris Chester said...
I liked the titles in LotRO more than CoX, though I couldn't tell you why really... functionally they are more or less the same. I DO wish they had more weight than "The Mongoose" or what have you.
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11-04-2007 @ 8:36PM
T-4 said...
Titles starting in CoH? PvE titles? Have you ever played UO?
Know your roots, MMO writers. UO had a bunch of titles that scaled based on two independent factors, and they add PvE-only titles in one of the expansions well before (I'm just assuming here, quit long before then) CoH came out.
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11-04-2007 @ 9:31PM
James Murff said...
I assume you are referring to the "Fame and Karma" system of UO, which did indeed give you titles for a PvE environment, but did not utilize them in the implementation outlined here. UO's system changed your title based solely on two numbers you raised or lowered by killing certain monsters.
The implementation I'm referencing here is based around accomplishing certain tasks such as completing a mission chain, killing 200 of monster X, or exploring all of a map. They also give you titles you can change on a whim, such as "The Mongoose" or "Inventor" for CoX, or "Wilderness Completionist" or "Wilderness Bug Zapper" for Tabula Rasa.
While you raise a valid point (One which, I admit, I should have covered in my article), I still stand by my statement that titles in their current implementation originated in CoH
11-05-2007 @ 7:19AM
blaz said...
No they didn't. SWG (Star Wars Galaxies) had titles for completing things 1 year before COH came out.
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