quote:
Original post by EricTrickster
The problem for us is that there is very little room for actual role-playing in these MMOs. They''re designed more with the arcade-style gamer in mind; I don''t think anyone, at this point, knows HOW to build an MMO/persistant game world that WOULD draw the hard-core roleplay crowd. Ultima probably has the biggest following in that regard, but how many of these gamers migrated to the games that came out over the past 2 years?
MMOs are new, relatively speaking. There is plenty of room for growth IF someone can find a way to bring in new markets
I thought your post was really interesting, and I think it is ironic because the way I''m wanting to go actually narrows that gameplay a bit. . . actually, that''s not fair. It changes the narrow group and fight tough mobs while camping for xp and loot to group seamlessly and fight waves of monsters to complete a game designed group objective. I''m thinking my idea will be more fun than the one currently represented in MMOs right now, but it is still quite narrow.
The idea of giving players the pen-and-paper RPG feel in an MMO is really neat. I''ve not had the opportunity to play in many of these. . . or, to be more precise, I have not found many groups I enjoyed doing this with. However, when I have joined groups that roleplay, the games seem to be heavily centered around characterization and story. The players bring it to the table. When I''ve played with the same people in an MMO, they didn''t bother to voicechat or type the same stuff. Maybe this is because the nature of a videogame is to give you preset rules in an unforgiving game engine, while the nature of a pen-and-paper RPG is to socialize by telling a group story. I''m not sure how a game designer could do this in an MMO. I think that you could do this with a smaller LAN game much more easily and I''ve heard that there is a Vampire:Masquerade game out that does this but I have not played it.
As far as an MMO, I think this will be difficult. I''d love to see story elements enhanced with cut scenes for NPC scripts to bring the story more alive. In fact, I would put a priority on this. Quests should be a diversion and a reward from the normal game system. They should be fun and challenging, but not cryptic. Players should know from the quest details where to go and what to do and the challenge should come in the form of fights or puzzles. Additionally, quests should be accomplishable by every class that is level appropriate for that quest. So many quest designers have upped the difficulty of quests so high that solo players cannot acheive many of them alone unless they play the most deadly fighting class in the game or a class that is capable of heal-tanking. This limits the choices in characters for players who like to solo play and annoys gamers that have to beg help or be the helpers for quests they have already repeated. I''m not saying make all quests easy, but don''t make them artificially difficult. Personally, I am much more happy with a quest that has lots of story and is completable without any frustrations like waiting for drops, long travel times, or the need to put together a group of questers that have not completed the quest yet or who are nice enough to help out.
Anyway, sorry for the divergence from your point. My main point was that I think the dynamics of pen-and-paper RPGs are such that it will be difficult to provide them in an MMO. So much of what makes tabletop RPGs special comes from the players and the game master. I think the trick is to do what all of the MMOs have attempted in giving the players a lot of character choices and ways to roleplay if they choose to do so.
My focus would be on providing the GM side of the tabletop RPG. Great and fun quests with cut scenes and a challenge that does not seem tedious or artificial.
