MMORPGs

[Squidget]

No flames, just a referral to some oppionions.

 

An old BIS'er once wrote a few words about what he considered good and bad in MMO's and even mention a couple of names:

 

http://www.winterwind-productions.com/modu...=showpage&pid=3

 

Any which way, wish you fun 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Reading through that guy's list of what he would like in an 'ideal' MMORPG, I'm rather amused to find that Guild Wars implements pretty much everything to the letter (while not being an MMORPG in the conventional sense.)

 

I think Guild Wars is a step in a new (and right) direction for MMOs precisely because they do away with the aspects people here have complained about. It does have a coherent story and instancing is used to make the player feel like the unique hero of that story rather than the guy waiting in line behind two dozen other 'unique heros' to kill uber boss number five.

 

Likewise with the way they handle progression, people who play for a ridiculously long time don't become more effective than casual players once both hit the relatively low cap. The level 20 cap is perfectly reachable for a casual player who plays the game 1 or 2 hours a day for a couple months, and once they have reached that point they are going to be about as powerful as someone who's played 3 times as long.

 

For the people who want an advantage for their hours of playing, this is offset both by the learning curve (the longer you play the more skilled and effective you will be), and unlockable items which are nice, but give relatively balanced benefits and drawbacks. Likewise, there are enough skills in GW that you can keep on unlocking them for some time after you hit the cap, so while a level 20 character might stop gaining power they will gain versatility instead.

 

Until GW came along I was never interested in the repetitive level grinding of MMOs, but its really changed my mind and represents a great step forward in the genre - IMHO, of course.

[EnderAndrew]

I think Guild Wars is a step in the right direction as it is a very focuses game designed at being fun and catering to the players.

 

However, is it a game that I think I would enjoy? No. I want a MMO that has an incredible world to explore, good quests, and dynamic storylines where players can shape the world they inhabit.

[Squidget]

However, is it a game that I think I would enjoy?  No.  I want a MMO that has an incredible world to explore, good quests, and dynamic storylines where players can shape the world they inhabit.

 

Fair enough if you don't enjoy GW, but I have to ask...

 

How would you suggest 'dynamic storylines where players can shape the world they inhabit' be implemented in a massively multiplayer game from a design perspective?

 

I don't see any method of actually doing it, short of going the NWN route and having player-run servers with non-developer GMs.

[EnderAndrew]

Again, look at games like Spore. The entire game is almost created for you every time you play.

 

Dynamic missions could be instanced based upon your actions, specific alignment, stats, faction, inventory, etc.

 

NPCs in town can change their schedules and dialogue to represent factions gaining influence in their towns.

 

Populations and economies of towns can fluctuate based upon faction control over various areas.

[mkreku]

Again, look at games like Spore.  The entire game is almost created for you every time you play.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The problem is that Spore hasn't been released yet, as far as I know. Neither has any other game that's so completely built from the ground up everytime you start a new game. IF (notice how big that if is?) Spore manages to pull off what it tries to do, it'll be setting a new standard for what games can do, but until then it's unwise to use it as an example.

 

I'm all for the idea of dynamic missions, areas and NPC's though.

[metadigital]

Random questing and NPCs are possible now.

 

To use Rick Burton as an example again, the concept of random quests (or at least random selections of a superset of quests) is already possible using the current NwN engine. See his brilliant Twilight and Midnight modules (and hopefully Dawn is still being worked on ... ).

 

In these, Mr Burton moves the triggers for puzzle solutions around, so that every reload sees them in a different combination.

[Azarkon]

I can't stand Guild Wars for some reason. Many of my friends play it, and they would really like to see me playing it too. But each time I try, I find that I'm bored out of my mind. Everything seems just so pointless: no community (outside of your friends), no real competition (except for PvP), no real economy, boring combat (PvE), and certainly no real incentive to become level 20 so that you can beat on Koreans/Americans/etc.

 

Guild Wars, for me, is Morrowind with better graphics and the possibility of playing with friends. I went about 3 hours in Morrowind before abandoning the game out of boredom. Guild Wars lasted longer, but still can't compare to Everquest, which took up ~6 years of my time.

 

But I suppose six years of EQ have a tendency to jade you. Still, I find Diablo II more interesting than Guild Wars, and I've played that game for a year or so after it came out too.

[Kalfear]

However, is it a game that I think I would enjoy?  No.  I want a MMO that has an incredible world to explore, good quests, and dynamic storylines where players can shape the world they inhabit.

 

Fair enough if you don't enjoy GW, but I have to ask...

 

How would you suggest 'dynamic storylines where players can shape the world they inhabit' be implemented in a massively multiplayer game from a design perspective?

 

I don't see any method of actually doing it, short of going the NWN route and having player-run servers with non-developer GMs.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Im with Squidget here, I dont see how dynamic storylines that "Shape the World" can work in MMORPGs to be honest (beyond very very very slight changes).

 

I see how dynamic storylines can work but not ones that shape the world because of the shear amount of players in game at one time. World would be changing every minute and just be way to chaotic to track.

 

As Ive said in other posts on this topic, dynamic storylines can and should be in current MMORPGs though. There just is no excuse for them not to be at this stage of game. If you look at a number of different product and intertwine their concepts/ideas togather, you could make AWSOME storylines with in a MMORPG. You could also change to world in small degrees (just nothing over bearing).

 

Far as quests go, lets look at that:

 

1) EQ showed us that intensely hard, well layed out quests that stick to a theme and tell a story will work in MMORPGs.

2) AO (and then SWG, WoW, GW, ect) showed us you can instance these quests so folks not standing in line waiting on a spawn or their turn

3) FFXI showed us you can add cut screens to MMORPG quests to build atmoshpere and immersion

4) (forget which game) showed us you can have NPCs join a person/group for missions/quests in MMORPGs which also adds to immersion and atmoshpere of mission/quest.

5) Bioware and Obsidian showed us good stories can be written for Offline RPGs, no reason same quality of story cant be put into a MMORPG.

 

Take those 5 items, put them togather and you well on your way to finally producing material thats immersive and entertaining for a MMORPG.

 

I personally will never understand why MMORPG companies thus far have refused to put those aspects togather. Just baffles me to be honest.

 

Now, for world changing material, DAOC has done this the best with relics, where you take a relic for opposing realm and you get the relics bonus (5% to melle or magic). No reason other MMORPGs cant use the same principle but expand on it so its not just attained through PVP. Trick is to keep any bonus small to avoid over powering or over saturating any group of players (IE: the negative effects that RAs and MLs had in DAoC). Still could be done.

 

As I said in a different post, imagine a star wars game where planets like Malacor V were PVP planets and on them were hidden temples. You could do like a 10 stage quest to find the temple, then you would have to conquer the temple, and only then would you get your faction (or guild/alliance) a 5% bonus in say jedi power or robotics, or what ever. BUT, it would be up to you to pay for guards to protect temple because other factions could attack at any time taking the temple from you as its on a pvp world (making you lose bonus). Then next faction would have to go through the 10 stage quest to capture temple and bonus until its taken from them.

 

Some thing simple as that could tell a great story, be challenging to do, and offer a unique reward for doing it by slightly impacting the shape of the game your playing. There could even be a well done and entertaining cut screen movie for you when you complete the challenge. There could be like 10 hidden temples spread over a assortment of different PVP worlds (outrim worlds in my original example).

 

Heck you could go even a step farther and have a system where, depending on amount of time each month, a guild holds a hidden temple they recieve a certain amount of pretige points. At certain levels of prestige points, new options would appear to them ( for example: new guild hall designs or what ever). Non game changeing stuff but things that seperate them from everyone else in non stat/ability ways, makes them known and/or more recognizable.

 

LOL, SW holds so many possibilities in it to do and make To bad, for what ever reason, MMORPGs are content to only utilize a couple key ingrediants at any one time it seems.

[EnderAndrew]

I've played in non-sanctioned free Ultima Online shards. Those often have the most dynamic worlds, where players affect major plot lines, and the world is reshaped to represent this. Entire cities can get destroyed, or may be under control by some invading army.

 

Mind you, these shards have a small fraction the number of players that official shards have, but they also have a much smaller staff running them, and they manage to run quite a few events.

 

The Matrix Online keeps track of your notoriety within your faction and world. Those with high enough notoriety get notices of major plotlines going down so that they have a chance to participate and shape the outcome of the world.

 

These things are possible in a MMO environment, and are poorly handled now.

 

These games will never truly be like single-player RPGs, because even when certian players can affect the world, they are in the minority. The playing experience for most players is vastly different from a singler player RPG.

 

That doesn't mean they should abandon storyline and stick with a truly static world that only offers level-grinding.

[Darth Jebus]

I'm playing both WoW and GW simultaneously. And its giving me a good side-by-side comparison of the two. As of right now, I'd have to give GW the slight edge. Here's why:

 

GW at least tries to make the player feel unique and it does have a coherent stroyline. The only time you see other players is when you're in a town or a village, or grouped together with other players. This is actually kind of nice because while you're off questing, you won't get an annoying whisper from someone looking for help or wanting you to do something because you're about 10 levels above what they are, and they can't complete their quest on their own.

 

This happens alot in WoW.

 

Plus, people can just be annoying sometimes. I can't tell you how many times in WoW, I would get a whisper from someone asking me if I wanted to group with them to do a Deadmines run or a Black Fathom Deep run and I would tell them, "I'm wrapping up a few quests right now, but I can join you in like 20 minutes." And then five minutes later, "So, you ready for the invite?"

 

WoW, as much fun as I've been having playing it, seems to be your standard MMO. You do get the feeling that you are only one of literally tens of thousands of players worldwide that are populating a large world in which you are an extremely small part. There is a players-on-an-assembly line, level grinding-wait-your-turn feel to it. There's no real storyline but there is a story. It's just the story of Warcraft, the world in general. Not a main storyline that you have to follow. It's the community that makes this game fun. For example, the server that I'm on in that game is relatively small so I don't really experience any lag and you get to know everyone pretty quick. It makes it fun to go on raids or just mess around with people. Also, I think I like the game because its my very first time I've ever played an MMO.

 

Oh, and about GW: did I mention its free. That's always a plus. heh heh

 

I've heard that GW is designed for pvp and I know another poster on here pointed out that there's no real incentive to get to level 20, but I dunno. I like the fact that there's a storyline and an attempt by the game to make the player actually feel like the hero/heroine. They get kudos for that, in my opinion.

[Musopticon?]

I've heard something about free fanmade servers for WoW. Is this just a rumor or have there been any real news? Anyone?

[Brickyard]

Well the only way you can really start to get any sort of dynamic worlds in MMORPGs is to start by having online GMs with power to take over an NPC (like the DM in NWN).

 

The first online game I ever played (Dragonrealms) had this. No other game since then have I come across that has it. This would give the company (SOE/S-E/Blizzard) the ability to alter some part of the world on the fly, and perhaps even have each server slightly different than the rest.

 

Of course that would take time, money and effort, and since users aren't screaming for it, no way they'll spend unnecessary resources making the storyline more interesting. You'd also need some actual ROLE PLAYING for this to work, which is severely lacking in MMORPGs.

[Gabrielle]

But I suppose six years of EQ have a tendency to jade you.  Still, I find Diablo II more interesting than Guild Wars, and I've played that game for a year or so after it came out too.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Diablo 2 rules online. I haven't played it online in a while but I think I'll start that up when I have free time.

[EnderAndrew]

I've heard something about free fanmade servers for WoW. Is this just a rumor or have there been any real news? Anyone?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I've heard they only work with the WoW beta client, and don't support most of the newer features.

[Musopticon?]

Aww, damned. Well, thanks anyway.

[EnderAndrew]

Aww, damned. Well, thanks anyway.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It should be noted that I haven't really looked into the matter. If I recall Tycho of Penny Arcade is the one who was discussing private/free WoW servers. Who knows if anything has changed lately.

[Kalfear]

The free game servers usually run about 1 to 2 years behind the pay for game.

 

Im really surprised to hear there is already Player run games for WoW, usually takes alot longer for the code to be broken.

 

I know UO player ran servers didnt appear until it had been out for 2 years, and even then it took a massive amount of work to get it up and running (I downloaded the client once, you had to place all the doors, signs, creature spawns, NPCs, ect).

 

It really was a ton of work, alot more then most folks think.

[metadigital]

I've played in non-sanctioned free Ultima Online shards.  Those often have the most dynamic worlds, where players affect major plot lines, and the world is reshaped to represent this.  Entire cities can get destroyed, or may be under control by some invading army.

...

The Matrix Online keeps track of your notoriety within your faction and world.  Those with high enough notoriety get notices of major plotlines going down so that they have a chance to participate and shape the outcome of the world.

...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I like this.

[ShadowPaladin V1.0]

.

I like this. 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Sony bought the rights to Matrix online.

[Darth Flatus]

there will be a dc heroes mmmmorpprgp. i know nothing about it or about the game genre so here are some possibly inane questions.

 

How will they stop everyone from being superman?

 

IF they stop everyone from being th emain heroes wont it suck just to be just the shining knight or vigilante? Will you be able to make custom heroes?

[metadigital]

There already is a Paragon City super-heroes MMORPG "City of Heroes", to be followed later this year by "City of Villains".

 

I think Marvel were suing them for breech of copyright, because (everyone creates their own super heroes, looks, powers etc) it was too easy to copy Marvel IP.

 

I think Marvel are bringing their own MMORPG out too.

 

I'm not sure the mechanism, I guess the levelling up fucntionality will provide lower characters with less super powers, so another superman can come and tan your arse ...

[Diogo Ribeiro]

How will they stop everyone from being superman?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

They could make these heroes and villains be actual irreplaceable NPCs in the gameworld, and the players would not be able to take their place. Or they could prohibit any given number of elements - such as names, power sets and costumes - from being used. But none of these actually seems like a good idea, the first because it isn't that much of a safeguard, the former because it's too restrictive.

 

The downside of making a game, especially a MMORPG, which is based around a known and well-established franchise with popular characters is that most every gamer will want to be the main characters. While I haven't played the Matrix Online, I assume many gamers try to create characters who are very close, aspect-wise, to the movies' characters. They also tend to use name variations of these characters. NEO, ^NEO^, NeO, Neo1, NeoTheOne, >oxNEOxo<, TehReal1, 3niTY, m0Rph3uz... You get the drift.

 

I suspect much the same will happen with any superhero-themed Marvel and DC MMORPG.

 

I think the best way to deal with this would be to create a middle level for gamers. Some incentives. You can't be any of the "hard-hitters", but you could play as a character who eventually gets to interact with them, either in a friendly or hostile basis. You could be a vigilante who just started his 'carreer' and meets up with some Marvel of DC character who could use some help; then progressively become of greater help or danger to established heroes or villains (but obviously never destroying them or taking their place - an unfortunate side-effect of licensed products like these).

 

I'd like to see special events could spring up, such as top players being given temporary high places in the game. Something like the "Death of Superman" or "Knightfall" story arc, or any other character-shaking plot being transposed into a MMORPG, but that these players could take their places. Much like Bruce Wayne chose Azrael to be the new Batman for a while, so could players take his mantle for some time. Unfortunately, there's always the chance that players that would perform actions deemed unrepresentative of their characteers by their respective owners, which would probably result in not using something like this at all. Maybe they could pick on these storylines and expand them a bit to allow players to become important in some other ways.

 

Or they could do something wacked out like making a central server which housed all the main heroes and villains which stood for the Earth used in DC canon, but then used all other game servers as parallel Earths, something in the vein of Crisis On Infinite Earths (DC) where there were heroes of multiple earths and timelines more or less co-existed. Something like this for Marvel could also be applied. No one could play the original versions, but instead they'd be able to play near identical versions without needing to worry with iron-fisted, licensing rules.

[metadigital]

Or they could have an instance of each universe for each player ... "

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your suggestion, or thinking of something else entirely, but wouldn't that tamper with players who attempted to form groups since there'd be unique instances for every single player?

[metadigital]

I was being facetious, after all what is the point of a multi-user experience if everyone is doing it solo. :D

 

Then again, there is some variation on the instance theme, with instances of end-bosses and so forth for the hoi poloi to kill in a queue.