Does multiplayer need progression and/or ranking?

So in designing a multiplayer game do you need to have progression to keep players playing? Do players lose interest nowadays just playing the same games over and over without unlocking anything new or with no "goal" other than winning?

Or do you think it's just something forced in to AAA gaming?

Another question is on the idea of "ranked" play, many games like Overwatch, Hearthstone and CS:GO have a ranked form of play to keep those who love to compete interested, do you think this is required in a multiplayer game trying to be "high level" or is it just another pointless feature?

Myself I like the idea of ranked play but don't care to much about unlocks, so when I designed my MP experience, I found myself not even considering a progression system, so I thought I'd throw it to the forums, what do you guys think? What keeps players playing?

 

Chess has ranking but no unlocks.

Minecraft essentially has neither.

 

Most minecraft servers implement a ranking or unlock system of there own. Or atleast the ones with a lot of players that are online 24/7. The more casual servers hosted by and played by friends.

I my opinion an unlock system is anyoing unless it is an MMO or RPG and even then I find it unpleasant.. But a ranking system is absolutly essential in my opinion. Now I know this varies from player to player.

 

I'm basically the opposite. I don't so much care about rank but I really care about unlocking stuff. I think the perfect system would be an inferred rank from the sum of unlocked item qualities. So, people are matched based on what they've earned and overall power scale, without an explicit "you've played this much so you must be X rank." If those unlocks are tied to achievements and feats, multiplayer games would be a lot more balanced as far as skill goes.

 

Oh the wall of text i could right about my hatred of vertical progression. I host LAN parties on a regular basis. once every couple months. usually have about 10-20 people turn out. do you know how many games will allow for spontaneous 20 player LAN? we've had to resort to our old pirated copies of Battlefield 1942.
successful LAN party requirements:
1)Free
2)Multiplayer at least 10 players in one match or instance.
3)No prior experience required. (levels and tiered tanks must go!)
4)Short rounds or matches. 1 Hour tops.

The LAN parties are dying. we are tiered of League. you can only play so much Starcraft 2 Arcade mode. WoT Platoons just won't work. CS-GO is BS (We've revisited Source a couple times). there are no good LAN games being made anymore. at least not that I'm aware of. I'm open to suggestions.

so I guess to answer your question. no.

 

Make one.

 

This brings up an interesting point. What type of multiplayer are you targeting?

For online play against strangers, go with the unlocks and ranks and awards. For local play, consider dialling back.

 

I don't think progression is necessary to player retention, but it is certainly a tool in your arsenal. Regardless of how a player or his team performs in any particular match, he still makes progress towards a personal achievement.

Rankings are more effective for particular types of players- but not everybody. Still, making players aware that a particular individual is responsible for knocking their rank down, or letting a player know that last action pushed them up a rank can be a good way to encourage players to return or continue playing. Burnout Paradise did a neat thing with rivalries by giving a revenge takedown when a player took out an opponent that had taken them out previously in the race.

Social Design is the thing that really keeps players coming back in a PvP experience- progression systems are only a part of that. Extra Credits did a few episodes on social design topics, and I recently posted a thread of my observations of social design in Mechwarrior Online.

I feel like designing for local multiplayer is a little different from online multiplayer- Smash bros had character unlocks for hitting a particular number of multiplayer matches - that made for some really exciting moments with friends when out of the blue the game told us a new challenger was approaching. It made that achievement something we had experienced as a group.

Online multiplayer progression is much more focused on individual players. Bob hit upon the weaknesses of ranks and tiers in his post earlier. If you divide players by skill, new players can't play with their more skilled friends, and that's not going to help user acquisition or retention. This problem is made worse by offering unlocks that give bonuses to players who have more time under their belts- if the unlocks are a big deal, it unbalances matches. If the unlocks don't make an apparent difference in play, they lose their value to the player.

 

It's necessary. You guys can keep arguing contrary but it's your call. There's a good reason it exists: it's proven. Minecraft is a terrible example. Of course it doesn't need it. But competitive violent multiplayer needs it.

 

There are two main reasons for progression systems. The first is that it's a teaching tool. You start off with a limited set of mechanics that expands at a rate where you learn the basics of it's functions and hopefully it's impact on the meta. The second is that they make the game more than just the match by giving some reason to play. Both help retention.

 

I personally think that the market is ripe for a wave of browser based multiplayer games that you can just jump in and out of without worrying about accounts and other such nonsense.

Just load the page and click start.

No clans, no levels, no server selection, no log ins.

Just start and go.

You may think I'm crazy, but just you wait and see. People want multiplayer games that are zero hassle.

 

Minecraft is a cooperative game, chess is a competitive one. You have to think about what the people who play your game want to find in their multiplayer experience.

Do they want to consistently have close and exciting matches? How will you design a system that provides them with this? Probably with some sort of ranking, since that is one of the easiest ways to quickly determine a player's skill as to put them in a match they will enjoy. This type of system makes most sense in games like MOBAs, RTS and TBS games in which competing with other players is the main engagement. In cooperative games like classic MMOs, or sandboxes, this is not needed.

As for unlockables, they provide something that often multiplayer games that focus on repetitive rounds would lack otherwise, clearly defined goals. While it may seem like a simple exploit to force a player to play more, in reality unlockables serve to provide the player with something to shoot for, while additionally making sure they have something new whenever they would have gotten bored. This is the important distinction, unlockables must provide something new, not something just incrementally better. Nobody is going to get excited about unlocking a 5% stat boost, but they'll be at least intrigued by a new ability, playable character, or some other mechanical change (or really even aesthetic ones, everyone loves unique skins).

Overall, I think it is foolish to shrug off entire systems as "just something forced into AAA gaming". They are obviously useful tools for your toolbag, you just have to decide when the right time to use them is.

 

I agree with parts of this. Multiplayer is a huge draw in browser games, but I think people still like progression as long as they don't have to grind nonstop, so that requires some sort of account even if it is just linked to facebook id. Simulations like farmville that progress even while you are offline and that you can participate in a larger global economy, more complex games rather than the toy games that makes up so much of the current browser multiplayer scene.