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It is becoming more and more apparent that people hate theme park MMOs. You know the type: 1. You arrive at point A. 2. You look around for the nearest glowing ! 3. You're told what to do, where to do it, how to do it, and where to report your progress. 4. You arrive at point B. 5. You report that you've now done what you were asked to do and receive a reward. 6. Go to step 2. And the more creative developers are beginning to pick up on this, sparking a surge in so-called sandbox MMOs. You know the type: 1. You arrive at point A. 2. You look around for the nearest glowing !, but don't find it. 3. You don't know where you are, why you're there or where to go next. 4. You quit / You stick with it, reading pages up and down on wikis/forums/obscure websites poorly translated from Korean/Japanese/Chinese. 5. You kill plebs who still haven't cleared Step 4. 6. You kill plebs and non-plebs. This is progress to be sure, but I don't think we're quite there yet. That's why I'm trying to make a case for what I've cleverly dubbed guided open-world MMOs (it probably has a different name in academia, but I don't know what it is). The way I see the future of MMOs is based on a 21st century corporate approach. Now what do I mean by that; see the way corporations have worked for the last 100 years or so, has been that the CEO is the big shot, the Don Corleone of the organization. He's the one telling everyone how to do their job, because damned if they don't know how. But that's changing. I don't know exactly when it started changing, but I do know it has to do with people growing up with, and creating technology. These people see the world in a different light, they understand that they do not know everything. They're few and far between in the corporate world, but they're there, and they're making a big splash. Take LinkedIn on any given day, and you'll find lots of articles and blog posts on how to be a good leader, and how not to micromanage your employees. The same I believe needs to happen to the MMO game development scene. The Game Designer, being the big shot CEO of the game development process, needs to learn how to delegate the task of playing the game to the players. 21st century leader knows that the most effective way to ensure loyalty and engagement is to allow the individual players to band together and play the game in whatever way they want, within the confines of the task at hand. In other words, it is the job of the game designer to create an engaging task for any and all to partake in, no matter the size of their contribution. In other words, games needn't have a set of tasks broken down into bite-sized pieces that even the dumbest of us can consume on a slow day, it needs to have one grand task, one big goal that all players contribute towards in their own way, be it through gathering and cutting wood, killing monsters or building houses. Having each player repeat the same steps over and over, each player being the hero, each player receiving the same legendary reward for doing the same legendary action as everyone else waiting in line; it is redundant and uncreative. It is micromanagement of the worst kind. Not only is it a serious hamstring of the development effort - the developers need to work 24/7 to keep up with players all consuming the same potentially flawed content, getting stuck on the same game-breakingly bugged quest stage and visiting the same dungeon to kill the same dragon as everyone else, it is also very, very boring and unimaginative. So the way I see the game of the future is a world where there's a big task to be done. As an individual, you might not know what it is, but if you ask around maybe you can find out, and then it will be up to you to figure out how to contribute to the clearing of that task. Let's say the task is that there's an evil Necromancer who's taking over the northern lands. What do you do? Do you gather up a group of people and start pushing up through the hordes of monsters swarming out of the lair, and then set up a base camp near the lair complete with a respawn point and crafting stations, where players can gather and join together in bigger raids to push deeper into the lair, or do you build weapons and armor for the players venturing into the depths expecting to die and lose their gear, or do you travel around and harvest resources for the people making weapons and armor, or do you roll your trade wagon around picking up cheap loot from the front line and ship it back to the cities to make the big bucks? That's entirely up to you. Edit: Added some text on why I don't see sandboxes as the future. A purely sandbox MMO lacks the driving factor. It lacks the force that pushes the gameplay forward, in whatever direction it might be. A fully sandbox MMO can only end up with people murdering eachother and plebs (mostly plebs), because there's nothing else to do, which leads either to a decline in population, because who wants to be killed all the time, or a sharp change in the direction of gameplay development, typically leading to a very themepark based future. Ultima Online showed us this, leading to the much hated Trammel expansion. What about EVE? Well EVE has somehow managed to fall in between the two due CCP first trying to give a drat and failing miserably, and finally letting go of the reins entirely. That's a hard sell though, because it literally means risking everything on the hope that players don't just screw it all up, and EVE is still a very hard game to get into, despite the amount of time the Swarm puts into writing wikis and helping new people. A lot of people end up simply dropping the game because there's no clear objective other than taking part in the incessant scheming and drama being provided by <the big alliance> and <people who don't like big alliance while secretly wishing they were the big alliance>, and that part of the game is more or less reserved for a select few. Now I'm not saying sandbox MMOs and themepark games have no place, they do, but I believe their place is in the past. I believe the future MMO is an MMO where you can choose if you want to participate or not. You can choose if you want to go full on themepark, and attempt to religiously follow the path set forth by the game designer, or if you want to go your own way entirely (and who knows, you might even trigger a completely new storyline), or if your place is somewhere in between, aiding or disrupting those who'd rather do one or the other. After all, it wouldn't be a good story if at least some of the good guys didn't turn bad. So... any thoughts? Has someone else beat me to the punch? I believe EQNext is at least sort of going this way? pertinent fucked around with this message at 13:03 on Aug 25, 2014 |
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Aug 25, 2014 11:36
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If you've ever played some custom maps for Warcraft 3 or Starcraft II they have made sandbox style cooperative maps that are some of my top favorites. I would love to see a building/terraforming MMO that focused on PvE territory conquest and cooperation.
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Aug 25, 2014 14:13
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You need to qualify what you consider modern sandbox MMOs, because when I think about the term "Sandbox MMO", I'm thinking ridiculously old school Everquest 1 / Final Fantasy 11 / Ultima Online, and not the modern niche asian titles. Development moved away from those originally because people by and large hated them back then and abandoned it for World of Warcraft when it came along and revolutionized how MMOs were made. I'll talk a spot about EQ1 since it's the one I'm most familiar with and for whom I have the biggest love/hate relationship with. This is mostly pre-luclin mind you. Despite the name, early EQ1 had surprisingly few quests in it pre-Planes of Power/rise of WoW dominance. EQ1 was a punishing, hateful game to play. Hell, when you made a new character you were dropped naked in the middle of your city's capital with nothing but a rusty dagger/short sword/club and a note that said "Maybe go check out your guild master, c'ya" and you were expected to figure everything else out from there. No maps, no quest markers, no hand holding. You stepped out into the newbie garden and you poked a rat with that rusty dagger until it fell over and you took it's whiskers and sold it for 7 copper because there were no quests to give you better weapons or armor, pretty much all low end gear was crafted by mid tier blacksmiths. Banded armor cost 1pp per armor class (anywhere between 5-15platinum per piece) and bronze plate was 3pp per AC, both of which were priced out of most starting player's range, and neither of which actually had stats besides the armor class. After level 10 there wasn't any solo content anymore. Anything that would give you exp would kick your rear end so hard you didn't have time to turn tail and run (not that it would matter, because every single enemy ran faster than you and would follow you to the ends of the earth in order to murder you. You had to group in order to make progress and even then I hope you like sitting 20 feet away from an orc encampment waiting for respawns. If you were a spellcaster, I hope you liked sitting around doing nothing because mana regenerated so slowly it could take you upwards of 10 minutes to recover a full mana bar if you had no mana regen buffs. That being said, it did have selling points. Because you spent so much time grouping from such a low level, there was a social aspect to the game that I hadn't seen since. You regularly communicated with people outside of your guild and got to know people. Because leveling took so long and you grouped with so many people while you did so, your reputation as a player mattered and shitheads found themselves blackballed from guilds and even grouping. I was way more socially connected to my guild there than I ever was to any guild I had in WoW/EQ2/Vanguard/ect. The game had this charm because you really felt like you were in a world that was bigger than yourself and you really weren't the chosen one who'll fix everyone's problem. I think we're starting to reach a point where people are getting tired of WoW, but going back to a game like EQ1 with modern graphics isn't what people are going to be reaching for. I feel like Guild Wars 2 would of been the closest thing we would of had to a paradigm shift in MMOs had there been a proper raiding endgame. It's still kind of a theme park, but it's a lot more free form and organic compared to talking to a generic NPC that wants you to gather exactly 15 bear asses and repeated ad nauseum. I think at this point rather than looking for a new MMO drug, a lot of them are just going to walk away from MMOs. Ever since WoW came out, most MMOs to come out since then have been trying to be a better WoW and they are failing because of it. When WoW came out, it wasn't trying to be EQ, or FFXI, or DAoC. It did it's own thing while being mindful of the mistakes of it's predecessors and launched a product that was in demand. Who knows, SOE seems to be putting a lot of time and focus on EQNext. Hopefully they learn the lessions of why Wildstar, Star Wars The Old Republic, and The Elder Scrolls Online are failing and learn from it because the MMO market is way too saturated for another WoW me-too game DeathSandwich fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Aug 25, 2014 |
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Aug 25, 2014 19:07
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People disliked EQ/11/UO but still stuck around for a good long while despite the difficulty, mostly, I'd imagine, because of the social aspect as you say. It's easier to get attached to a game when you find people to play with. But those three were all in one extreme end of the themepark spectrum; get to max level and kill demons to get better gear to kill bigger demons to get better gear, and all that with very little hand holding, but I'd still saying they're theme park games because of the "max level, kill demons" gameplay. You enter a dungeon with a pre-determined prerequisite of gear you must have acquired from previous dungeons in order to get gear for the next dungeon. Then as you say people shifted to WoW. Essentially the same game, now just with the added bonus of the game telling you where to go and how to achieve your goal. People loved it for a long time, but then Blizzard started removing the very thing that kept people playing, the social interaction. Instant transport, dungeon finders, smaller dungeons, quest trackers and lots and lots of solo content. Same deal though, just a much less extreme version of it. Get max level, kill demons to get better gear to kill bigger demons. On the other end of the spectrum we find absurdly time consuming and pointless games like Second Life and A Tale In The Desert, but arguably the most sandbox games created to this day, moving to games like Ultima Online, and on a larger scale EVE. In these two, players are able to go whichever way they want, if they're willing to invest the time required to skill up and buy/build a big enough stick to hit others with. UO had something of a community, until they went and completely upside-downed their game philosophy with Trammel. So players left. EVE still has its community, despite the number of times CCP has tried to sabotage that. Though these days it seems they're embracing their players in a way no other developer has done, and it'll be interesting to see how far that'll take them. All things considered, EVE is 11 years old and few MMOs can boast such a number. So what are the bits we can extract from all this; Well for one, community is key. If the game does not encourage player interaction, it's doomed. Having a sense of direction is another. I'm not sure WoW's ! system is the way to go, in fact I personally hate it to death, but it's evident that being in the middle of nowhere with no clue is no good either. There are thousands of people who want to invest every waking hour on their game, and there are millions that want to invest a somewhat smaller amount of time. People enjoy the linear experience provided by WoW over the repetitive grinding that is/was EQ. I think the golden area is somewhere between the sandbox and the themepark games. If I had to translate all those bits into game elements it'd probably be something along the lines of: World-scale campaign-based (think tabletop RPGs) storyline. The story happens whether you participate in it or not. It might start out small, clues left scattered all over for explorer-types to find while monsters start pouring over the mountains for fighter-types to defend against while crafter-types build fortifications, strongholds and lots of replacement gear, and then progressing to where explorer-types are encouraged to go scout for enemy bases and bring fighter-types there to destroy them and crafter-types building and running siege weapons and battlements, finally culminating in a battle of epic proportions, possibly split into several stages, where all will have to combine their strenghts to overcome evil. But if you don't care about such things, you can easily run off and empty out dungeons while everyone else is busy. Or you could get in league with the bad guys and help them by sabotaging defensive installments, or you could take advantage of the price hikes caused by a major war to exploit adventurers for all their hard earned cash. Simply put, giving players the choice if they want to participate in the story laid out before them, and letting them decide on their own how to participate. Another thing would be doing away with the pointless capping of.. well just about everything. I'm not sure what drove Blizzard to implement rules on how many times you're allowed to play a dungeon per day, but I'd argue that people wanting to spend 10 hours every day on raiding should be allowed to. The only thought that comes to mind is them trying to prevent people from clearing their limited content releases too fast, which in itself is a result of their own inability to deviate from the "we serve, you consume" mentality. Basically I'm thinking that if a person were to grind exp for days on end, they should be allowed to. We can agree there ought to be a soft cap at some point, a baseline of sorts for designing encounters against, but, again, if someone were to dedicate their life to the game, why shouldn't they be allowed to reach a point where they might fight with the strength of two men? Or three? Or why shouldn't a crafter be able to reach a point where anything he creates is coveted and held up as an example for everyone else to compare against? I'm not sure where this post is going and it's getting late, so I think I'll end here... pertinent fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Aug 25, 2014 |
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Aug 25, 2014 21:53
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Forgot to add Now couple all this with a richly detailed and highly engaging world, governed by all of the best sandbox dynamics, such as a living breathing nature, where plants grow and spread, trees that are cut stay cut and if you decide to build a fort and claim a spot of land for yourself and yours, then that of couse should be possible as well. So you might be fighting over territory and other such petty materialistic things, but suppose the game decides to invade your town. Do you suck it up and rebuild? Do you try and tough it out on your own or do you call in the nearby towns, and use the chance to a) raid their towns while they're gone or b) mend old wounds and settle differences? And what if the invasion is just a prelude to something much bigger? Do you keep it to yourselves and set out in hopes of scoring big before others start finding out? Or do you warn everyone and attempt to rally troops? pertinent fucked around with this message at 22:24 on Aug 25, 2014 |
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Aug 25, 2014 22:12
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pertinent posted:Now couple all this with a richly detailed and highly engaging world, governed by all of the best sandbox dynamics, such as a living breathing nature, where plants grow and spread, trees that are cut stay cut and if you decide to build a fort and claim a spot of land for yourself and yours, then that of couse should be possible as well. Ask the UO designers what happened when they implemented ecosystems during early design. Players don't give a poo poo about husbandry, and unless you're planning for servers populated only by a few hundred character objects, they are a holocaust waiting to happen. Even wholly cooperative games like A Tale in the Desert become glutted and littered with player compounds and production and extraction devices, which severely limits the flow of new players beyond the initial surge that comes with a fresh server. Modern UO has added multiple land masses, mainly to accommodate the demand for more housing space. Persistent customization is a fantastic way to keep players hooked. City of Heroes, as simple and small-scale as it was, had an extraordinary degree of character customization, and UO's housing systems haven't been considered a holy grail just because they were neat. Other games have pulled the housing thing off, but instancing has kind of flattened the appeal. As for the rest of your suggestions, you'd might as well ask for a pony while you're at it. The systems you're pining for are extraordinarily complex, and the expense of building all of that only to have the players knock it down is ludicrous. MMOs are not your Friday D&D game, any more than your Friday D&D game is an accurate representation of life in medieval Europe. Your DM can come up with new poo poo on the fly. Coders trying to cope with the efforts of thousands of players and scripting systems that absolutely can't fall apart under that ridiculous load can't. There's no percentage for the producing company to make something exclusively for the players to pull apart. Not on a scale any larger than ATITD or Wurm. Oh, and raid lockouts? They're there so that you don't catass your way through the content and start whining that you're bored, only to do it again the next time they've spent months of time and money building the next set of raid dungeons.
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Aug 26, 2014 01:49
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Sounds similar to Wurm Online although it's mostly a sandbox experience.
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Aug 26, 2014 03:36
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I feel like, if any MMO deserves the Final Fantasy 14 treatment of "Shut it down for a year or two to retool gameplay and graphics and re-release it", it is Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. It released absolutely dismally but had some really neat ideas for crafting and diplomacy and got significantly better post release after everyone stopped paying attention to it. You had a sprawling open world and enough landmass for non-instanced player housing. It had unique classes and class mechanics that made large differences in how you played your class vs others in the archetype. The Disciple was hands down the most fun time I've ever had with a healer in any MMO ever, simply because the game wanted you to wade in there and punch poo poo in the face so hard you healed your allies, and that's not to mention the combo system the class had where you string together your basic attacks to give yourself and your group buffs. It was possible to level to max just playing solo, but there were so many opportunities to run group content for amazing upgrades to leveling gear that it was highly incentivized to do so. I feel like the big problem with that game came primarily from mismanagement in it's development stages because most of what changed in that game post Brad McQuaid was generally for the better. It just so happened that everyone had forgotten about it by then and SOE didn't give them the support staff after that to accomplish the things they wanted to get done (Alternate Advancement, more raid content, ect).
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Aug 26, 2014 15:31
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Bieeardo posted:Ask the UO designers what happened when they implemented ecosystems during early design... Well UO had a few things working against it on that part, namely that a single person with his horse could clear a forest in an afternoon. Now I don't mean to sound like I know it all, but have you ever seen a tree in real life? Not your average sidewalk or avenue trees, but trees that belong in an actual forest. They're huge! A guy with a horse chopping down and carrying off a fully grown oak tree, let alone doing it in an afternoon? Forget it. Absolutely not. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not preaching that you'd need the combined troops of a big guild to cut down a tree to get wood for tools and whatnot, but perhaps the better option is somewhere in between the two. A lumberjack spending an hour or two on cutting down a single tree, trimming it, strapping it to a horse and transporting it back to town isn't completely farfetched in my opinion. The better a lumberjack you are, the faster you can do all this, naturally. All that effort would of course have to be compensated in the sense that a log of wood actually contains a log's worth of wood when processed. The whole 1 log = 1 plank deal is just completely farfetched and doesn't fit very well in a game world with a destructable ecosystem. Now combine that with actual territory control and you'll have people fiercely defending their bit of forest, because I'd be damned angry if some muppet came and cut down my trees. As for the rest of your commentary on how expensive and how impossible it'd be to create a complex and dynamic world, just think about the Elder Scrolls MMO. You only need to go back a few years before suggesting a million people populating the same server cluster was a completely outrageous and impossible-to-do task. It'd never happen in a computer game. 3D graphics in computer games? You're barking mad, man. That stuff is for professional graphic designers only. More than 640k memory? What world are you living in where that'll ever happen? A computer in every home? Are you loving crazy? I could go on. I honestly can't imagine what the game development scene will look like in 10 years. Occulus Rift v5.0 with built-in BCI running on a X-Station 999 with quantum processing? Who knows? I'm not trying to say "we need it, and we need it now!" In the end I'm just hoping maybe I can inspire someone to dream big and build the next big MMO. After all, a lot of the technology exists already, it's just waiting for someone to put it all together. Hell everyone and their grandmother has an orbiting satellite these days capturing detailed topographical imagery down to the cm scale. If you scooped up all of the Google Earth data you could probably recreate the entire planet in a game engine by now, and if not you could at least do it in a 1/4 or 1/5 scale. For all I know someone's already done it. I mean the country of Denmark was recreated in Minecraft, complete with houses and streets and forests, and that's just using readily available data. Now spice it up with some clever procedural techniques and you'd have a very large and very unique world for people to go tear to shreds. Edit: Can't spell. pertinent fucked around with this message at 18:24 on Aug 26, 2014 |
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Aug 26, 2014 18:19
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pertinent posted:Well UO had a few things working against it on that part, namely that a single person with his horse could clear a forest in an afternoon. Now I don't mean to sound like I know it all, but have you ever seen a tree in real life? Not your average sidewalk or avenue trees, but trees that belong in an actual forest. They're huge! A guy with a horse chopping down and carrying off a fully grown oak tree, let alone doing it in an afternoon? Forget it. Absolutely not. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not preaching that you'd need the combined troops of a big guild to cut down a tree to get wood for tools and whatnot, but perhaps the better option is somewhere in between the two. A lumberjack spending an hour or two on cutting down a single tree, trimming it, strapping it to a horse and transporting it back to town isn't completely farfetched in my opinion. The better a lumberjack you are, the faster you can do all this, naturally. All that effort would of course have to be compensated in the sense that a log of wood actually contains a log's worth of wood when processed. The whole 1 log = 1 plank deal is just completely farfetched and doesn't fit very well in a game world with a destructable ecosystem. Now combine that with actual territory control and you'll have people fiercely defending their bit of forest, because I'd be damned angry if some muppet came and cut down my trees. In your example, what in the blue gently caress are you, the person, suppose to do in this hour that your avatar is loving around with this tree? Because waiting an hour on getting this log processed and moved sounds like the worst kind of bullshit tedious makework possible. Even if you made it a minigame I just straight up would not have the patience for a process even a quarter of that length. There's a reason why MMO harvesting is just a thing you click on to make magic wood appear in your bags; if it takes an hour to gather one tree's worth of wood only autists would ever bother with crafting.
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Aug 26, 2014 18:34
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DeathSandwich posted:In your example, what in the blue gently caress are you, the person, suppose to do in this hour that your avatar is loving around with this tree? Because waiting an hour on getting this log processed and moved sounds like the worst kind of bullshit tedious makework possible. Even if you made it a minigame I just straight up would not have the patience for a process even a quarter of that length. There's a reason why MMO harvesting is just a thing you click on to make magic wood appear in your bags; if it takes an hour to gather one tree's worth of wood only autists would ever bother with crafting. So hire an NPC to do it for you. Or an autist. Or do it with a group of people to make it go faster. After all, community and player interaction is key. Where does this idea that you must be able to do everything on your own, and in no time at all, come from? Didn't we agree just a few posts ago that people hate games that run out of things to do two weeks after launch? Instant gratification leads to a depletion of things to do because developers can't instantly gratify up some new features overnight, as you yourself pointed out. Edit: And also, what do people who mine asteroids in EVE do? I'm pretty sure they don't go AFK, because they're not allowed to as per the terms of service, and they definitely don't have any minigames to play either, and yet, somehow, every day people find their way to the asteroid fields, clicking away for no reason other than to scoop up resources to sell at the market. pertinent fucked around with this message at 19:04 on Aug 26, 2014 |
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Aug 26, 2014 18:53
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pertinent posted:So hire an NPC to do it for you. Or an autist. So then you've literally just made an activity that only botnets would do and you don't see a problem with this? Here's the thing: I would love to have a more challenging MMO to play, but don't expect players to do that sort of bullshit, because as soon as you tell people that you could clear a dungeon in the time it takes to chop this tree down you've just guaranteed that you've lost that audience. Why not at that point just take harvesting completely out of the player's hands and just have a Neverwinter style hireling to magic logs out of a tree dimension every hour and a half and then not worry about players realistically chopping down trees in real time and its effect on the ecology of the world?
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Aug 26, 2014 19:02
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DeathSandwich posted:So then you've literally just made an activity that only botnets would do and you don't see a problem with this? Then what's the point of territory control? And then what's the point of having a community? Or a guild? Hell why even play computer games in the first place, it's all just pixels anyway. You get nothing out of it right? Take a step back and look at what resource gathering adds to a game, not what it takes away from it. I get that you don't like clicking dead things to collect resources. I really get it. I don't like it either personally, but I understand that it's part of the dynamics that control the world. Resource gathering means transport and protection, it means trade and competitive pricing, it means banditry and conflict, it means territory control and most importantly it ultimately forces people to act together to get poo poo done, instead of sitting in their own little bubble instance picking lint out of their navels letting the game play itself.
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Aug 26, 2014 19:10
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Mundane resource gathering objectively adds nothing worthwhile to the gameplay of any game it has ever been. A good game would make it entertaining via making challenging encounters to gather said resources. Easiest way to achiever that goal is by having the vast majority of materials looted from monsters. Those monsters and the environments they exist in should be designed in a challenging way. Also MMOs need to get away from one time fun hand designed content and focus on procedural generation. If a player can expect a programmed encounter to go a certain way it means they can game it entirely and it becomes boring quickly. Seriously though I don't know how mentally insane someone has to be to defend grind mechanics like the mundane resource gathering featured in the vast majority of sandbox MMOs. Firefall's thumping mechanic is a definite step in the right direction. Defending an automated resource gathering node against foes is far more interesting than standing around chopping trees. quote:transport protection banditry Full loot PvP MMOs are dumber than dumb and a massive poopsocker's game so I assume you mean PvE methods of these mechanics. The only way I see a sandbox PvP game working is one completely void of linear progression. The entire reason DayZ close to kinda works is that if you're lucky enough you can kill anyone as a newbie with a pistol. It still suffers from a deep gear creep but is a step in the right direction. Overall I get a very romanticized vibe off of your posts instead of analyzing the practical implementation of concepts. pertinent posted:Then what's the point of territory control? And then what's the point of having a community? Or a guild? In Dawntide the point of territory control/community/guilds was to have space upon which to place resource gathering facilities like mining camps and lumber mills that automatically produced resources for your town over time. Also if you pissed people off they probably wouldn't trade with you. I'm stumped as to a fun way to implement having to transport these resources from the node back to a town though. I'm thinking something like Mount & Blade's roving bandit squads. DeathSandwich posted:players realistically chopping down trees in real time and its effect on the ecology of the world? Xsyon actually did just this thing. If you killed too many creatures and/or chopped down too many trees the animals/trees wouldn't be able to reproduce. What happened was people exterminated all the animals and trees and the dev had to increase animal spawns and implement a forestry tree planting mechanic. That was a few months after everyone had quit, though. The worst thing a developer can do is assume players are not out to ruin their game in every way shape and form. puberty worked me over fucked around with this message at 07:37 on Aug 27, 2014 |
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Aug 27, 2014 07:12
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Extra posted:Mundane resource gathering objectively adds nothing worthwhile to the gameplay of any game it has ever been. Actually, fishing is always the best part of any mmo that has it.
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Aug 27, 2014 08:49
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pertinent posted:People disliked EQ/11/UO but still stuck around for a good long while despite the difficulty, mostly, I'd imagine, because of the social aspect as you say. It's easier to get attached to a game when you find people to play with. But those three were all in one extreme end of the themepark spectrum; get to max level and kill demons to get better gear to kill bigger demons to get better gear, and all that with very little hand holding, but I'd still saying they're theme park games because of the "max level, kill demons" gameplay. You enter a dungeon with a pre-determined prerequisite of gear you must have acquired from previous dungeons in order to get gear for the next dungeon. Then as you say people shifted to WoW. Essentially the same game, now just with the added bonus of the game telling you where to go and how to achieve your goal. People loved it for a long time, but then Blizzard started removing the very thing that kept people playing, the social interaction. Instant transport, dungeon finders, smaller dungeons, quest trackers and lots and lots of solo content. Same deal though, just a much less extreme version of it. Get max level, kill demons to get better gear to kill bigger demons. I think pre-instance EQ (pre-PoP at least) was closer to a sandbox than a themepark. To a very real extent, non-instanced end game zones, especially places like ToV, Kael, Ssra, involved players being content for each other as much or more than mobs were the content. Sure, you were in ToV to kill some dragons, each of which spawned in the same place, used the same abilities every time, etc. To a certain extent, the challenge of beating these creatures was the challenge. But Competing with other guilds was the real rush, the real driving factor. A dragon murdering your tank chain, followed by frenzied attempts at camping a cleric, etc. Was exciting. But scouting for targets, trying to figure out where competing guilds were headed, keeping intelligence on target respawn, riding the edge between mobilizing fast enough to win a race vs. rushing into a futile attempt, calling each other faggots in /shout, trying to murder each other with trains, and unloading spit flecked rage on server forums, man, that was the real show. Farm status instances are boring. Skullfucking each other in open world end game was dynamic, hard edged, zero sum competition. The dragons were just there as substrate. Players made the real content. Beyond that, players had a ton of freedom to manipulate the world. FD pulling wasn't designed, it was invented by players. AE groups were never intended by devs. Shakerpaging, etc. It was just people being as innovative within parameters as possible. When I was leveling a warrior in Velious, I conjured up solo content by playing giants against dwarfs, training giants into dwarves just far enough to kill three or four dwarves but no more, leaving me with a near-dead giant. No dev planned that, and it wasn't even lucrative, it was just some challenging poo poo I figured out at 2am. EQ became a stale theme park once progression and end game raiding became instanced, some time between Plane of Time and Gates/Omens. Before that EQ was as cutthroat a free for all as eve today.
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Aug 27, 2014 09:27
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Extra posted:Mundane resource gathering objectively adds nothing worthwhile to the gameplay of any game it has ever been. A good game would make it entertaining via making challenging encounters to gather said resources. Easiest way to achiever that goal is by having the vast majority of materials looted from monsters. Those monsters and the environments they exist in should be designed in a challenging way. I know it's really fun to discuss specific and very detailed game mechanics, and I'd love to do it with you, but it really belongs in a thread of its own. Resource gathering has the potential to add a ton of dynamic gameplay and opens up a lot of options for a game designer to explore and figure out. We could discuss for days on end how a game designer might implement such a feature, but that doesn't make a very good case for why a guided open-world MMO is better than a sandbox, wouldn't you agree? Suffice it to say that if you have people gathering resources, you have people who want to not gather resources. They might instead choose to steal the resources from people who've gathered them. And you have the potential to add monsters who don't like people gathering resources near their home, and you have people who'd rather you didn't gather resources near their home as well. How to make it all a fun and engaging experience, be it by thumping, clicking or hiring workers to do it for you is outside the scope. quote:Overall I get a very romanticized vibe off of your posts instead of analyzing the practical implementation of concepts. Absolutely. As I said, I'm trying really hard not to get drawn into a game mechanics discussion, because that can go on forever. Kazak_Hstan posted:I think pre-instance EQ (pre-PoP at least) was closer to a sandbox than a themepark. To a very real extent, non-instanced end game zones, especially places like ToV, Kael, Ssra, involved players being content for each other as much or more than mobs were the content. Sure, you were in ToV to kill some dragons, each of which spawned in the same place, used the same abilities every time, etc. To a certain extent, the challenge of beating these creatures was the challenge. But Competing with other guilds was the real rush, the real driving factor. I get what you mean. In the end players are by and far the most difficult opponents to overcome. Perhaps something game devs might consider integrating into a campaign is that key characters and events are all dev controlled. Has this ever been done in any significant way? I can see it now, a handful of raids all combating the evil dev-controlled Necromancer that spawns ungodly amounts of monsters and when they're beaten off he picks up the controls himself and starts punishing the puny players. "So you think the holy trinity is going to save you? I think not!" as he whacks the healers dead left and right. But as Extra also says procedural generation is the most important aspect to creating random playstyles. I'd even go a step further and introduce, at least in some limited form, machine learning techniques. The smarter the monster, the better they might learn from their friends being defeated. If your group is overly successful hunting down dragons, then perhaps dragons might start to avoid you or change up their tactic entirely in some way, and of course monsters using the terrain to their advantage would add a whole new level of complexity to a fight. Archers go up on the hills to increase their range, heavy type monsters might blockade a choke point instead of blindly rushing in to fight, then again that might also be used against them, for example an orc might be strong, but easy to anger, and once angry it loses all ability to think creatively making it blindly rush forward to its doom. Add to all that an ecosystem where players have to both compete and cooperate to reach the end of a campaign and get to the best hunting areas, and you have a lot more to do than just sit around waiting for monsters to respawn out of nowhere. On a side note now that we're talking combat, I'd personally like to see combat being slowed down a bit, in the sense that instead of simply making combat slower, I'd rather say that each encounter ought to be an an actual encouter with several steps to it. First you size up your enemy. Can you even defeat this brutal looking creature? Next comes strategy. How does one approach such a thing? And finally the actual fight being more about teamwork than mashing buttons faster. One might run in to block an attack, leaving an opening for someone else to land a hit, and then everyone settles back into their positions waiting for another opening. Somehow find a way to integrated turn based combat or perhaps call it opportunity based combat instead. But again that's probably something a game designer would have to flesh out in detail. pertinent fucked around with this message at 13:39 on Aug 27, 2014 |
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Aug 27, 2014 13:30
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SWG and The Repopulation did and are doing what your dream game describes. Almost, anyways. I think these two games captured what it is to be a great "sandpark" with their open world PvP content, along with their main story quests that featured Star Wars characters. It did a good job of making you feel like you were part of a bigger picture, and I think that's what it's all about, really. The problem with MMOs today has less to do with mechanics and more to do with the state of social interaction online. The spirit of late 90's/early 2000's gaming attitude has radically changed over the past decade to include everyone instead of one dedicated fanbase that wasn't being pandered to by marketing and advertising. Reliving those old moments is going to rely on the quality of the game's community, which is hard to balance with PvP spergs going nuts on every release. e: V I should clarify that they "go nuts" because the mechanics allow them to, so really, you're right. Mechanics wise, The Repopulation is going to let you explore caves, or craft, or be a PvP sperg just like you said. What you described basically is the essence of what SWG used to be, and what TR is trying to recreate. TR is taking the system a little further by using a good flagging system like SWG did, along with PvP zones incentivized with better crafting materials to provoke natural conflict. Not to sound like an advertisement for the game, but you've so closely described the sandboxy nature of SWG and TR that I had to talk about them. Now that the phobia of reexamining MMO design has started to dissipate, hopefully the community can rally again for smaller, more social oriented games like this. zwdzk fucked around with this message at 14:06 on Aug 27, 2014 |
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Aug 27, 2014 13:38
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zwdzk posted:SWG and The Repopulation did and are doing what your dream game describes. Almost, anyways. I think these two games captured what it is to be a great "sandpark" with their open world PvP content, along with their main story quests that featured Star Wars characters. It did a good job of making you feel like you were part of a bigger picture, and I think that's what it's all about, really. I suppose you have a point, but doesn't it come back to giving people the choice of how to play? PVP spergs want to PVP, and would be able to do so if they have areas to PVP in and PVP over. The people who like to adventure and explore would have ample opportunity in a humongous world with lots of procedurally generated content. The people who like to kill monsters exclusively could go off to look inside every cave and cavern. The people who like to gather and create things would have plenty of opportunity to either join up with the PVP spergs and share their spoils, or even venture into taking over a piece of land of their own, though they'd have to defend it on occasion. Or form a relationship with an alliance of anti-spergs to defend them, while providing said alliance with the gear to kill spergs. Or join adventurers and hunters and use the materials they might gather to create gear for them. Or live exclusively in the safety of an NPC city relying on trade to get the materials they need.
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Aug 27, 2014 13:54
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DeathSandwich posted:Because waiting an hour on getting this log processed and moved sounds like the worst kind of bullshit tedious makework possible. I agree that it is boring as gently caress but people will put upp with poo poo like that, just look att EvE miners. Tabbed out, only checking in when the timer for the hold is full only to dump it into a can next to them and then mine on, literally just shooting lasers at rocks. It is kinda amazing what people will put up with just to view numbes go up.
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Aug 27, 2014 20:20
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So the OP wants EQ with modern textures.
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Aug 28, 2014 15:12
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pertinent posted:Edit: They go afk because nowhere in the CCP TOS/EULA does it say you can't go afk. Now, Eve miners are not allowed to use botting programs and there are "attempts" to stop botting. And no discussion on afk mining in Eve would be complete without mentioning James315 and his great roleplaying in declaring that all afk miners are bot-aspirants and should be treated as such according to his New Order of High Sec mining code.
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Aug 28, 2014 22:11
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pertinent posted:It is becoming more and more apparent that people hate theme park MMOs. Foundational assumption has not been demonstrated in any depth, please revise and resubmit your paper. To be less tongue in cheek, theme park MMOs are by a huge margin the most successful. A vocal minority bitches on internet forums about innovating beyond them, but attempts to do so usually crash and burn or fizzle out in a fit of mediocrity.
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Aug 28, 2014 22:16
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I've actually been wondering if even theme park MMOs would be better off with abandoning the idea of "levels" and creating content to be played in parallel. I guess Eve did basically that with its learning tracks, though Eve is anything but a theme park. It would at least solve the issue of spending a ton of effort developing content that doesn't occupy very much player time.
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Aug 29, 2014 00:35
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OneEightHundred posted:I've actually been wondering if even theme park MMOs would be better off with abandoning the idea of "levels" and creating content to be played in parallel. I guess Eve did basically that with its learning tracks, though Eve is anything but a theme park. It would at least solve the issue of spending a ton of effort developing content that doesn't occupy very much player time. The biggest gripe I've always had with linear storylines that everyone must go through during the obligatory 1-50 [strike]tutorial[/strike] questline is that by the time you reach the end, any kind of story element you've been led to was most likely completed, blogged about, and described in detail on the internet by people much more dedicated than you. Ultimately this kind of gameplay only leads to a handful of people truly experiencing content for the first time. Any followup attempts require at least an hours worth of studying YouTube videos or reading execution manuals detailing where to go and what to do. If you do not spend time on YouTube instead of playing the game, you're deemed irreversably contaminated and are shunned by the "endgame community". So developers put in group finders and automatic dungeon teleports forcing the rejects to battle eachother for the position of being the least popular guy in any group, which leads to people yelling and screaming at eacahother for being n00bz. In the end the group falls apart after the first wipe and nothing is accomplished. Captain Oblivious posted:Foundational assumption has not been demonstrated in any depth, please revise and resubmit your paper. Courtesy of mmodata.net, which is now dead because the game companies pretty much all stopped reporting numbers. Chart of MMORPGs with 1-12m peak subscribers: http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-1.png Can we all agree that the only 1-12m subscriber MMORPG that is not in serious decline is Runescape, which happens to be the only MMORPG on the list that isn't defined as a classic theme park game with 1-50 level progression and "end game" content? Yes? Alright. Let's proceed to the next bracket. Chart of MMORPGs with 150k-1m peak subscribers: http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-2.png Let's start from the top. It's safe to assume that any game that hasn't delivered subscription numbers since 2011-2012 is opting not to do so because the numbers do not speak in the games favor. - Second Life - Very non-themepark: Last data point was around 2011'ish. Popularity was mainly caused by news sites and corporations for no real apparent reason flooding the game with money. It is safe to assume they're not sitting on 800k subscribers anymore. With Second Life 2 in development however it's possible they'll squeeze some more life into the brand. - Warhammer Online - Catastrophically themepark: It was like a million voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. This game is very dead. - Age of Conan - Very themepark: I'm not sure why Funcom even keeps this thing alive or why people keep playing it, but it's definitely not going anywhere any time soon. It's possible they use it only as a testing ground for their game engine. - Rift - Very themepark: Numbers in freefall. Game has gone free to play in an attempt to keep itself alive. - Lord of the Rings - Very themepark: Numbers in freefall. Game has gone free to play in an attempt to keep itself alive. - Final Fantasy XI - Quite themepark: The game is a thousand years old and plays that way too. It's not hard to understand why the subscription numbers are falling. - Everquest - Very themepark: I'm not sure how many people still play this, but supposedly some still do. Not sure what SOE has planned for it. - Dofus - ??: I really don't know much about this game. I think there's a thread here somewhere about it, but that's all I know. - EVE - Sandbox: Historically this has been doing very well, steadily increasing subscription numbers since it came out like 12 years ago. CCP has stopped releasing numbers though. Probably has to do with one of the many "let's improve the game" patches they've released the last few years, that people haven't been too fond of. Pure speculation though. - Everquest 2 - Very themepark: Never quite as popular as EQ1, this game last reported losing 20k subscribers over the period 2009-2010. Hasn't been heard from since. - Star Wars Galaxies - Very sandbox/Very themepark: Was really popular and sandboxy until they decided themepark was better. Was finally put out of its misery a few years ago. - Ultima Online - I don't know what this is anymore? Themepark?: Hasn't reported numbers since 2009. Who knows how popular it is these days. Possibly the only reason it's still alive is, I imagine, because it takes practically no server capacity to run and it's still generating some sort of profit. - DAOC - ?: I never played DAOC. I understand it has the classic 1-50 experience, but supposedly people play/played it for the PVP and that's very sandboxy? - City of Heroes - ?: Never played it so I don't know, but it's dead now. Now, looking at this list we can agree that yes, theme park MMORPGs do take up a remarkable amount of the market, but at the same time, how many sandbox games really exist on this list? Three? One is an impossibly unintuitive spaceship game full people that want nothing more than to kill you for not being good at it, another is a java game from 2001 that still looks like it's 2001 and the last died out because it was turned into a theme park MMORPG. Let's face it, there's not a lot to choose from so it's not hard to see why sandbox games have a hard time competing, and let's face it some more, every single theme park game peaks really high and then fades off into nonexistance because the development model just doesn't work for MMORPGs and either the devs can't keep up, or the companies running the games won't assign enough dev time to keep the games alive. It's ridiculously loving expensive to maintain a themepark MMORPG, and to reiterate the point it just doesn't work. As I stated in the OP, a number of studios are now picking up on the idea that sandbox is where the stuff is at, but they're still restricting them to the tried and true development models for a "sandbox game", ie ArcheAge that sort of started down the road with land ownership and ecosystem cultivation, but they stopped halfway and went for the classic 1-50 experience with instanced endgame encounters anyway, and on the other hand you have Black Desert Online which has gone full out EVE, basically making the world one big PVP slaughterfest simulator, just in a fantasy world instead of in spaceships. What we need is to rid the game development companies of these old types who've been around for decades and who've designed hundreds of games that are ultimately all the same. Every time a theme park game fails the game designer shuffles to a new company and starts all over again. Just look at WildStar. It's World of Warcraft made by the people who made World of Warcraft, but now it's hardcore! pertinent fucked around with this message at 12:00 on Aug 29, 2014 |
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Aug 29, 2014 11:50
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your chart is a bit old. apparently FF14 is well past the 1million mark as well, though. http://www.craveonline.com/gaming/articles/676685-ffxiv-a-realm-reborn-surpasses-2-million-subscriber-milestone nehezir fucked around with this message at 12:37 on Aug 29, 2014 |
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Aug 29, 2014 12:35
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I think your problem is that you're conflating "Themepark" with "Bad Thing That I Don't Like Therefore No One Else Should Either". When I'm reading your post in my mind's eye I'm reading the word "themepark" with the same level of derision that hardcore WoW/Wildstar/ect players say the phrase "Welfare Epics" Second Life isn't an MMO at all, it's multiplayer Maya and the only funny thing about it is seeing a swarm of flying dicks whenever it shows up in the media. EQ, FF11, UO, and DAOC in their hayday were all very much sandbox experiences in that when you made a character it dropped you in a colossal uncaring world that gave you no objectives save for ones you gave yourself. All these games either are or are approaching 15 years old and expansions and patches have changed the games fundamentally from how they were at launch in order to keep up with the demands of consumers. City of Heroes/Villains is its own beast because the majority of the content you do when leveling up is running though procedurally generated missions, there really wasn't much of an overworld quest presence with people with ! over their heads, and when they were they were completely ignorable for the most part. It was only the very beginning and the very end of the game when you were getting quests from NPCs standing around waiting for you to show up. I get that you have this weird hard on for EVE, but I seriously doubt that you could get lightning to strike twice for that particular style of game. Just making EVE-But-With-Elves-And-Swords edition will bring in a dedicated hardcore PVP crowd, but as we are seeing with Wildstar, doing nothing but appealing to the hardcore is a surefire way to kill your game. You have to make the game as accessible as possible for the largest amount of people. In terms of subs/active players right now, the best non-WoW MMO is Final Fantasy 14 and it makes sense from a numbers perspective. It's incredibly accessible and easy to get into. It's a known brand and has name recognition vs some upstart new IP. After level 15 or so on a character you can put quests away and level pretty much solely on the duty finder and FATEs and hunting logs. It is also legitimately the best single player Final Fantasy experience in the last decade. Those things alone will guarantee that they have subs for a good long time to come. Right now the biggest thing hurting MMOs as a genre is oversaturation of the market. There is just too many MMOs out there and the majority of them are either striving to steal WoW's thunder and failing, or appealing to a niche market/nostalgia and treading water. We're also at this weird point where most of the big name MMOs that were coming out (ESO, SWTOR, Wildstar) are post release and the only big named MMO still on the development deck is EQ Next, and for all we know and have about the world with Landmark (creating a living breathing destructible world using the power of voxels is still kind of a weird sell for an MMO, but unique) we still really don't know what the finished game is going to play like and only have a conceptual idea of the class and combat systems are going to be (insofar as it seems like a weird blend of Final Fantasy's "switch between every class on one player" and Guild Wars' "You have 8 skill slots and have to switch between active abilities to fit the situation" sort of character customization.
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Aug 29, 2014 15:10
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"Themeparks" aren't even really a bad thing per se either. Sometimes you want direction, aim and don't really want to think too hard about what to do next in your video game. Everyone always clamors for that new old style like EVE and ~*~the sandbox~*~ but look at how many of them are dead. Wasn't Darkfall that hardcore sandbox experience people wanted? How well is that doing?
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Aug 29, 2014 17:31
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Stanos posted:"Themeparks" aren't even really a bad thing per se either. Sometimes you want direction, aim and don't really want to think too hard about what to do next in your video game. Basically also this. Don't get me wrong, you can certainly incorporate sandbox elements and have things off the beaten path that never gets pointed out. I feel like MMOs would benefit from having areas off the golden leveling path that serve little purpose; at least then it makes the world feel bigger than a world solely made up of interconnected outposts that you bounce between to murder bears. I feel like one of the big conceptual differences between the EQ/UO era of MMOs and the things that came after it is that EQ and UO (and even WoW to an extent) were games that crafted their world and their lore first and foremost and the game was built up around that. Since that point it feels like MMOs have started with the gameplay, and proceeded to build the world to suit the gameplay, rather than the other way around. That's not a complete failsafe though, I feel like Vanguard did very good with their worldbuilding, then completely hosed the dog on having a good functional game at their launch. It took them like 2 years to un-gently caress the gameplay but by that point nobody gave a poo poo. I know I beat on this drum in several other threads in this subforum, but I actually really loved post launch Vanguard but by that point nobody played it and it got choked out by SOE. I feel like they could drop the Vanguard class system wholesale into the next EQ game and it would probably be a fantastic fit, but alas it's probably not meant to be. DeathSandwich fucked around with this message at 18:15 on Aug 29, 2014 |
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Aug 29, 2014 18:12
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I logged into Archeage hearing it compared to Ultima Online; saw a thousand people running in the same direction as me pinging to yellow question marks and then I immediately logged out. Personally. I hate quests because they have designed loot and are there just to waste time and create an artificial barrier. I really have alot of Nostalgia for Ultima Online because when I logged in I would think to my self; what do I WANT to do today, not what should I be doing or forced to be doing. Dungeons in MMO's are ultimately a waste of time if you are at a low level because the gear is going to be very rapidly obsolete making the chore of getting to end game a grind. Ultima never had an end game because as you were doing what you enjoyed, whether it be farming, killing enemies, taming creatures or sailing the sea you were always able to train your skills whilst doing other things. You never felt like you were "wasting time". MMO's these days seem like a race and the tutorials are so overly repetitive that it's all the same. Equally, why I loved Everquest was the mystery of it; the not knowing despite it being level based you always had the chance to get great rare things by chance. I think there should always be a chance for truly rare items, no matter what level you are etc dropping off an enemy, or stumbling across it. They need to get rid of these awful yellow question marks because the rewards will NEVER be good; they are custom items that are given to everyone.. the competitive nature in me wants to stand out from the Crowd, whether it be by chance, skill or my choices.. not because it's handed to me I never thought I'd see the day where I am not into MMO's but they are all just the same.. all so artificial. Examples of what I love would be going to a new town as a quite competent PvP player in UO and then dressing in a grey robe wielding a sword and a orc helmet and roleplaying as a poor beggar hiding my expensive neon hair.. adventuring out with a group of role-players and instantly mounting my ethereal horse and blasting them all to pieces. Yes this is trolling in a sense, but the opportunity to troll is given to you in MULTIPLE ways that the game designed; i.e poisoning food and giving it to people, dispelling peoples portals, killing innocent people, blocking people, stealing items from people, snooping in peoples bags... it creates a community, and a reputation for people. Most importantly is the story that is created... My story in WoW is that I dinged level 50 and got a purple item. /Nostalia Nevz fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Aug 29, 2014 |
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Aug 29, 2014 18:40
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Nevz posted:Dungeons in MMO's are ultimately a waste of time if you are at a low level because the gear is going to be very rapidly obsolete making the chore of getting to end game a grind The best Dungeoning experience I've had in an MMO in recent history was tromping around Cyrodiil in ESO finding all the points of interest and doing the dungeons. I didn't need poo poo from them but the mystique of exploring the game world with buddies (wouldn't be possible without level scaling) was reason enough to check them out. I'm genuinely stumped why some small indie team hasn't made a level-less MMORPG focused on exploration. Maybe it's because everyone who heads MMO development is obsessed with money and player retention. Seems like you could hobby game dev something in Unity easily enough. (As I sit here and do nothing) Pie in the sky idea: EQ landmark but instead of making buildings on plots players design dungeons instead. Neverwinter's foundry but open world. Second Life's creation tools in an MMORPG. You get the idea. The Mighty Quest For Epic Loot was an interesting idea but instead of focusing on player creativity they made the entire game heavily based on competition and PvP. The best way to retain players is to give them unlimited content through player creation tools. There is no better way to keep people playing your game. People will waste infinite amounts of time flexing their imaginations and consumers will log on nightly to check out the new creations players have unveiled. Its the obvious solution to the issue of content creation with lack of linear progression. Players can make content tailored to their tastes and share it with other players instead of developers trying to strategically pick which content to make to please the most people. Give MMOs the Blizzard map editor treatment. puberty worked me over fucked around with this message at 19:02 on Aug 29, 2014 |
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Aug 29, 2014 18:49
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these ideas are ambitious but I don't really find mouth watering. I can honestly say I love linear gear progression and raiding in MMO's. some of them are even challenging, but that may or may not be because my skill level is mediocre at best.
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Aug 29, 2014 20:21
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pertinent posted:I get what you mean. In the end players are by and far the most difficult opponents to overcome. Perhaps something game devs might consider integrating into a campaign is that key characters and events are all dev controlled. Has this ever been done in any significant way? I can see it now, a handful of raids all combating the evil dev-controlled Necromancer that spawns ungodly amounts of monsters and when they're beaten off he picks up the controls himself and starts punishing the puny players. "So you think the holy trinity is going to save you? I think not!" as he whacks the healers dead left and right. They've done this before, Matrix Online had gms play the story characters and there's a great example from Asheron's Call which had regular story events with GMs playing the story npcs. In one event, a big demon lord was to be summoned after six crystals imprisoning him were destroyed. Of course, all that players knew was these crystals dropped high level loot. On one server, a group of players devoted themselves to protecting the last crystal, dying to it repeatedly to level it up (monsters could level off player kills in AC) and defending it 24 hours a day. They held up the next story patch for the entire game until devs went down there themselves in high level characters to take it down. And then the players killed the GMs twice before they managed to destroy the crystal and unleash the demon into the world. They did get their own monument in game though to mark their achievement. Maybe some mmo might take this idea and have story events where players can change the plot of their server like a Mass Effect save. The amount of content creation to work with branching plot lines per server would probably be way too much though.
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Aug 29, 2014 22:59
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The future of MMOs is developers realizing that people generally like one aspect of the MMO the most, be it the pvp, the story/leveling, or the pve, and then turning that into a stand-alone game. See: The huge surge of co-op/multiplayer games in the past few years, while the number of new MMOs being developed is virtually zero. I just wish there was a good game that got WoW-style, TBC/WotLK era PvP done right. BLC was a really good attempt, but died for various reasons due to dumb developers. In addition: Pulling a monthly subscription from millions of players is a nice pipe dream, but pulling in hundreds of dollars each from 5% of your free to play game's population is the modern reality of games. Minera fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Aug 29, 2014 |
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Aug 29, 2014 23:12
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Eej posted:They've done this before, Matrix Online had gms play the story characters and there's a great example from Asheron's Call which had regular story events with GMs playing the story npcs. In one event, a big demon lord was to be summoned after six crystals imprisoning him were destroyed. Of course, all that players knew was these crystals dropped high level loot. On one server, a group of players devoted themselves to protecting the last crystal, dying to it repeatedly to level it up (monsters could level off player kills in AC) and defending it 24 hours a day. They held up the next story patch for the entire game until devs went down there themselves in high level characters to take it down. And then the players killed the GMs twice before they managed to destroy the crystal and unleash the demon into the world. All of this makes for a great story, and as I think about it I realize that this, at least in my case, is ultimately all I want from a game. A good story. But when the story runs out prematurely, I get bored and move on. I mean, you can only re-read the last chapter of a book so many times before it just starts to choke you, right? And that's where everyones difference of opinion comes into play. Some poeple like action stories, some people like relaxing stories, some people like exciting stories and some people like dull stories. The more you force your kind of story down peoples throat, the more you encourage them to go somewhere else for their entertainment. Sure as a game developer you occasionally have to kick some people in the rear end to get them moving in the right direction, but that should essentially be all you're doing and letting them figure out the rest on their own. edit: You have to be God, you know? You make the rules and then you release the damned fools to watch them mess it all up in no time. Does that make sense? pertinent fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Aug 30, 2014 |
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Aug 30, 2014 16:07
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Eej posted:They've done this before, Matrix Online had gms play the story characters and there's a great example from Asheron's Call which had regular story events with GMs playing the story npcs. In one event, a big demon lord was to be summoned after six crystals imprisoning him were destroyed. Of course, all that players knew was these crystals dropped high level loot. On one server, a group of players devoted themselves to protecting the last crystal, dying to it repeatedly to level it up (monsters could level off player kills in AC) and defending it 24 hours a day. They held up the next story patch for the entire game until devs went down there themselves in high level characters to take it down. And then the players killed the GMs twice before they managed to destroy the crystal and unleash the demon into the world. Thanks for that, never heard of it before. For me, I feel like just getting the ability to connect to the server for $15 a month is really high. Why aren't there more GM driven characters and events? I know that subscription money also pays for new content supposedly, but really it is added to keep players playing/subscribed and could easily be sold as an expansion. A lot of MUDs have GM controlled NPCs which is one aspect that has not been adopted into MMOs at all. How much would it cost to have someone control Thrall lets say (Just because WoW is a widespread good example) to interact with the world and players as a full or part time job. If I logged on and saw Thrall assembling a horde to assault some town, that would easily overshadow most of the dungeon raiding stories you've ever heard; and could even make world PvP relevant again. Not sure how hard it would be but I imagine it would be super cost efficient to have the NPC controlled across all shards/servers. pertinent posted:Does that make sense? Chunjee fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Aug 30, 2014 |
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Aug 30, 2014 16:46
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Chunjee posted:No it doesn't. You don't have to force everyone into the story being told. If they want to make their own story about whatever their character is interested in, why stop them? I never meant you should stop them from making their own story, just the opposite. But someone has to make sure the world keeps spinning all the same. There has to be events unfolding occasionally that draw players into an unexpected conflict, and force them to develop their story in a new and unanticipated way. This is a key element missing from sandbox games in my opinion, because that's how life works. Life happens, and then it's up to you to deal with it. pertinent fucked around with this message at 17:03 on Aug 30, 2014 |
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Aug 30, 2014 17:01
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I came up an idea for an MMO that would be more of a guided sandbox the other day which might fit what you had in mind. Open world MMO set in a fantasy world that is blanketed in a Demons Souls-esque fog. All players start in the one clear area that is an AI run town and basically have to build and explore their way through the fog. The fog is a gating mechanism and fogged areas would be low visibility and filled with monsters that try to eat you. Fogged areas are cleared by players killing enough monsters and also planting beacons on landmarks to clear out the area and make it available for settlement. Once an area is clear, its resources become available to be harvested and dungeons become opened as well. Fogged areas can gate progress by requiring, for example, players to be equipped with iron weapons and armor crafted from resources in a previous fogged area before they have a chance of even fighting the monsters further away from the starting point. Throw in some player social systems (guilds, free PK outside of the starting area, claiming areas in the name of a guild, etc.) and you've got yourself a sandbox with a unified purpose with a metagame defined by the players (one server may go carebear and everyone works together to clear out the world of fog, while another might have megaguilds that ruthlessly clear out and claim new land for their own).
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Aug 31, 2014 06:32
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pertinent posted:If you scooped up all of the Google Earth data you could probably recreate the entire planet in a game engine by now, and if not you could at least do it in a 1/4 or 1/5 scale. Was curious if you have read about ReRoll (http://rerollgame.com/) - While not a mmo specifically they are doing some interesting things, I am curious if it will ever come out. Either way this is a interesting topic I'm still chewing my way through the huge walls of text.
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Aug 31, 2014 07:37
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Minrad posted:In addition: Pulling a monthly subscription from millions of players is a nice pipe dream, but pulling in hundreds of dollars each from 5% of your free to play game's population is the modern reality of games. Not sure why the modern era gamers seem to feel that P2P games are somehow outdated. A sub isn't outlandish, it's simply no games in the past 5+ years(ish) have warranted a sub. Nearly every sub based game went F2P because it was a horrible wow clone. Sony did the EQ-TLP servers and locked them to sub only and they were massively successful. I definitely agree with a lot of the points made in here by various people, but I have a few of my own theories as to why the longevity of most games ultimately fail. 1. Gear progression. Pre wow (no green/blue/purple/etc) loot schemes were more incremental and provided noticeable "power" increases (generally). Most had a pretty non-linear gear progression. Whereas in most current MMOs you go from raid said 17, with 1188234 total stat points, to raid said 18 with 1188239 total stat points. Getting new weapons/armor is mundane and required as a gate to the next level of gear pinatas ad infinitum. Of the plenty of problems EQ had, I think that's one of the things they did correctly. Doing hundreds of quests in a zone isn't actually any different than killing monsters to get a rare one to pop, it just seems that way on its face. Like someone else said, doing a dungeon is current games is mostly pointless because you're going to get 27 pieces of gear the next level anyway. 2. (ties into 1) Garbage crafting systems. So you spent the past 4 hours trimming dog pubes to make a shirt? Awesome, it's about as strong as the one you got 8 days ago for turning in 7 rabbit turds. I can't think of the last MMO I played where crafted stuff was anywhere close to being on par with random dropped junk and/or quest rewards. Most are directly related to leveling progression, where if you DID manage to craft enough to make X; you can't make it anyway cause everything there is 7 levels higher and shits on you. Most follows the same tired leveling formula of every game out there: make 99 dog pube shirts until you can make bear sac shirts (then make 99). Most of the older MMOs people have mentioned here (UO,EQ,etc) had meaningful crafting systems. Were they hard to raise...yep! Once you were a skilled crafter though most of what you could make wasn't 99% useless, AND crafting added an entire new dimension to the game.
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Aug 31, 2014 21:46
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