I've Made a Huge MistakeGame-defined goals are important, actually
For years now, I've held that one of the key ingredients for a successful online game design is allowing - and rewarding - players defining their own gameplay goals. Instead of laying out a single primary progression track and leading players down it, creating a more varied buffet of gameplay that are all equally valid and rewarding, and letting the players try, define, and freely swap between their own long- and short-term goals within the gameplay.
I have come to realize, this is... not wrong exactly, but, well. Wrong.
It is important for there to be a variety of gameplay styles and content, and to make sure that the player feels equally rewarded for following where their heart leads rather than feeling obligated to go a specific path. But... well, turns out, it kind of sucks if the game doesn't give you any guidance, actually. Which seems like an obvious thing in retrospect but boy was it a revelation for me this week. Missing that single thing of the game giving some guideposts so you have something to work towards when you don't have ideas of your own is, I realized, exactly why I lost interest in my space fantasy text game. I didn't have any goals, and the game didn't offer me any, so I felt like there was nothing to do.
In short: giving players lots of options and freedom doesn't do any good if you don't show them what they are.
This is all at least partly a product of my finally trying out Palia for the first time this week. It's a really interesting game to study - I can feel exactly which other games they pulled a lot of their concepts and design elements from, and seeing how they melded them together into one game gives a lot of room for analysis. At the same time, BitCraft (and the community there is actually where i first discovered Palia) has announced its third alpha test period, so that's been on my mind as well.
Both of those games have a certain degree of player-directed goal setting, along with some other similarities (and differences). BitCraft more than Palia, since the latter sort of expects you to do everything eventually I feel like, while BitCraft encourages specializing without punishing JOATing. But both also give you some form of direction presented by the game itself.
In Palia, it's quests. There's a main quest line, and side quests, and you can choose to do or ignore any of them as you please. All of the different skill tracks and mechanics have their own starting quest pop up to get you to try it out (and they introduce you to the various game NPCs as you go, too). Since the quests do give you functional rewards, it's part of the feeling I've gotten of "you don't have to do this content now but you'll want to do it eventually". But I dunno, we'll see if I stick with it long enough to get a sense of long term progression goals. I'm still living in a tent.
In BitCraft, on the other hand, once you get past the tutorial, it's achievements. They give a mix of achievement points (which are literally just bragging rights?) and profession-themed cosmetics, so they feel extra super optional while at the same time giving you something concrete in the game to pursue. I think this approach is probably the bare minimum level of built-in game goals you can get away with while still avoiding that "but I don't know what to do" issue I finally realized exists. Because, in absence of all other criteria, you can at least look at the cosmetics for a profession achievement chain and go "yeah, I like those, I'll go level that profession to get it."
All of which boils down to one thing: if I want to make a game with that kind of gameplay buffet - which I definitely do! - I'm going to need to figure out how to provide those game goals without railroading, in a way I'm happy with.
... And I'm gonna be honest. I've been thinking about this all more because I've realized... Palia has no real competition. There's nothing else out there in the "cozy MMO" niche. And this is a travesty! So this is largely in the context of, I'm seriously assessing how realistic it would be for me to make one. I've been plotting and planning all the details and complexities involved in an MMO for a very long time, so... we'll see.