Quote:Original post by methulah
Part of roleplaying is the fact that you get to roleplay that character. The character you want to be. I'm not dissing your idea - but it just sounds like people would end up serving beers to people who have been out burininating, when they want to go out burininating.

Quote:We don't have the natural language capabilities yet to allow you to chat with NPCs about any old thing, and that wouldn't be a game in any event.

Are you missin the whole point? That is why we are talking about MMO games. Because they have so, so much more potential. You can talk to another player about anything you want, while sitting in a bar. That is why MMORPGshave more potential for roleplay and immersion than regular RPGs and that is why I want to know why we arn't seeing it.

Actually it would seem YOU missed MY point since you cherry picked one sentence and responded to it out of context. I brought up several key points, none of which you responded to.

The funny thing is, you said in the bit I just quoted from you here: "Part of roleplaying is the fact that you get to roleplay that character." and I directly addressed why the chief problem in trying to implement your desire is technological. Unless you are going to hire 10,000 actors to reside on all your game servers, how do you maintain the immersion? If you can write AI smart enough to respond on the fly in such a way that realistic "role-playing" is possible in an MMO, then I suggest you get rich and famous fast, because so far you're the only one.

Finally, you didn't respond to the point raised by myself and several other people, namely, it's an MMO. You can only roleplay if the 100 other random people on your server choose to roleplay as well. Ain't gonna happen. People won't pretend the on-line world is real no matter how much you want them to. And it only takes one person to buzz wreck your whole "immersive experience".

Chasing immersion and role-playing potential in single player is doable because the designers and programmers build the whole world around one person. Trying to do it in an MMO, is, in my opinion, a pipe dream because you are dependent on the other PLAYERS sharing your same desire to pretend this cyber reality is actually REAL. And they simply will not do that.

What do you find to be a better battle system?
1> Battle Mode: where say you and your party come into a random encounter and wll take it in turns to defeat the enemy.(Probably a bad idea for mmorpg games)

2> Battling like runescape and neverwinter nights where you click who you wish to attack and watch your character and the enemy battle it out and all you can really do is select to use spells and items.

3> Active Battling say the game comes with a USB controller and the arrows are used to walk/run around and the other buttons are used to perform attack/jump/defend/roll etc and the keyboard can be used for other things like chatting/changing battle stance and the mouse can be used to select inventory and other things in the player menu.

If I attempt a mmorpg game again I'd try out the active battling I think it would make the game more enjoyable. The downside would really be that if many players are fighting in one area the lag would be major. But it's worth a shot.

Quote:Original post by methulah
Peronsally, I think the NWN (I hate Runescape) way of doing things is the best idea fo MMORPG. Howevfer, if you are to have that fighting style, it needs to have thousands of different skills, feats, abilities, stances and everything else to make it interesting. Just clicking once is boring

I don't agree. Do you not realize that the advanced combat engine ("that fighting style") is simply adding onto the single click system? IE, if players are happy with real-time clicking one button for hours upon hours to kill hundreds of monsters with zero brain work, giving them several buttons and a few stances will make their freak'n day.

Adding more complexity does not result in needing even more complexity. IMHO, no game has an excuse to give the player just one combat option. Even when they have generic weapons, there should always be choices. Two choices are better than one.

On the other hand, it's pointless to add tons of stances and abilities. You need to stop and consider what the player will want these abilities for. An anti-air attack? A guard breaker? Counter a left swing? Now consider how many "purpose" abilities you have. Thousands? Unlikely. Does it help to give the player several abilities for one purpose? Nope - not unless they are for different weapon types. It just makes the system confusing having several moves that accomplish the same thing.

Thousands is a lot of data. Do you realize how long it would take you to create animations for ( walk + run + stance + 20 other anims ) * thousands? You need to get your head out of space.