Iron Chef: I agree that Eve is pretty much the only commercial MMO that isn't so hopelessly care-bear it is pointless. I am actually going to re-sign up for it when I have some extra cash lying around.
About that last example though... WTF KIND OF GAMES DO YOU PLAY? Flaccid or erect? *cringes* :P
I guess the real problem is that people are so determined to be able to easily do everything in a game. If they want to raid a dungeon and they fail, they get mad because the game cheated them. If someone else is better in PvP, the game cheated them. If another player has more gold, the game cheated them. This could go on and on, but the idea is that players want to play an MMO where they are the best, with no work.
Another pet peeve of mine is people getting into an MMO, getting scammed, and then complaining. I am of the opinion that you should learn from experiance. Get scammed once then never again. That is why I like Eve so much. You can scam without fear of banning, but people are also alot smarter and know what to watch for.
MMO topic: Is MMO still appropriate?
What I mean by changeable is "consumable content". I've posted a few threads on it already, but it just doesn't seem feasible at the moment.
What I mean is that the town guard who asks you to kill 10 wolves will not ask it of every passing traveler, only when the wolves are causing actual friggin' problems. Instead of being 'frozen' in time, the history will continue. You may log in a month later and find a smoking crater instead of a huge city on your world map. There will be actual 'invasions' and battles of NPCs, forests burned and re-grown. A persistent, but not permanent world.
What I mean is that the town guard who asks you to kill 10 wolves will not ask it of every passing traveler, only when the wolves are causing actual friggin' problems. Instead of being 'frozen' in time, the history will continue. You may log in a month later and find a smoking crater instead of a huge city on your world map. There will be actual 'invasions' and battles of NPCs, forests burned and re-grown. A persistent, but not permanent world.
Quote:Original post by Humble HoboYeah, that's unrealistic. Even if the technology was there, it would be horribly unpopular. Again, I'll cite EvE. I've got about 150 million isk worth of hardware (maybe twenty hours' worth of effort to earn it if I'm working hard) locked away from me, perhaps forever, because the station it's stored in was conquered by an opposing faction, and I can't get within a twenty-minute range of it without having to contend with PvP that requires a thirty-man fleet to handle. Even if I could get there, I've got no docking rights, so all I can do is float and sputter. That's a lot of stuff, basically stolen from me forever.
What I mean by changeable is "consumable content". I've posted a few threads on it already, but it just doesn't seem feasible at the moment.
What I mean is that the town guard who asks you to kill 10 wolves will not ask it of every passing traveler, only when the wolves are causing actual friggin' problems. Instead of being 'frozen' in time, the history will continue. You may log in a month later and find a smoking crater instead of a huge city on your world map. There will be actual 'invasions' and battles of NPCs, forests burned and re-grown. A persistent, but not permanent world.
How many games would allow that to happen? How many are successful? If you came back and a city was a "smoking crater", and your shop with all your crafting supplies and your epic lewts and your mount and your wife and your bags of gold were all in that city when the aliens landed, and now you're homeless and penniless and alone, how many players would stoop and build it up with worn-out tools, and how many would uninstall your game, flood your forums with obscenities and cancel their payments?
Quote:Original post by Iron Chef Carnage
How many games would allow that to happen? How many are successful? If you came back and a city was a "smoking crater", and your shop with all your crafting supplies and your epic lewts and your mount and your wife and your bags of gold were all in that city when the aliens landed, and now you're homeless and penniless and alone, how many players would stoop and build it up with worn-out tools, and how many would uninstall your game, flood your forums with obscenities and cancel their payments?
I've thought about this before, and the only solution I could come up with was to let each player exist in their own isolated single-player world. Then when they go online, the game seamlessly merges their world with some similar worlds of players facing like-minded challenges for the duration of a 'sitting'.
e.g.
Player X logs in, goes to their shop to craft some stuff.
Player Y logs in with a quest to slay a grizzly bear.
Player A logs in as a general with an army to lay siege to a town.
Player B logs in as a heroic lvl 70 knight.
Players X and Y will have their game-worlds merged, so that a story can be constructed around player Y having to go buy a new sword from player X in order to slay the bear.
Players A and B will have their game-worlds merged, so that the heroic knight can participate in the giant siege.
The worlds AB and XY are not connected, as the stories of the lowly bear-slayer and sword-forger would not be enhanced by the story of the general and the heroic knight's great battle.
In order to do this, all the details need to be kept very vague, as to not cause conflicts/contradictions between the different versions of the game world.
For example, neither the crafter or the general can know the name of the town they are currently in! Because if the general destroys "Oldtowneholme" in one game, but the crafter still lives in "Oldtowneholme" in another game, the stories conflict/contradict and anyone involved in either of these stories could no longer interact with people from the other story.
By keeping the details vague, the general could later meet up with the crafter and a sensible non-contradictory story could be generated around their interaction...
This whole shard system needs to be combined with a kick-ass interactive narrative generator though, so that the right shards can be connected and relevant quests/stories generated for the players in the connected shards...
That would be a real feat to engineer. Why not just have each player literally have multiple worlds available to them, using a sort of "StarGate" model? Have each player's "offline" or "solo" world linked to the collective MMO world via a one-way portal, and give them a spell or item or ability to teleport "home" at will. It could cover logouts, disconnects, etc. as well.
Then have each of the "online" worlds have various themes and strengths and weaknesses. You could log in to your lonely patch of the world, grind up your skills/lewts/whatever, and then periodically go to a PvE shared zone to show your pokemans around. Alternately, you could totally eschew your home turf, using it to grow crops and store trophies, while bombing around on a PvP zone and enjoying the company of like-minded individuals.
Inevitably, the carebears will be rich, so seed the bestest lewties on the most unforgiving realms, so trade will be worthwhile.
Then have each of the "online" worlds have various themes and strengths and weaknesses. You could log in to your lonely patch of the world, grind up your skills/lewts/whatever, and then periodically go to a PvE shared zone to show your pokemans around. Alternately, you could totally eschew your home turf, using it to grow crops and store trophies, while bombing around on a PvP zone and enjoying the company of like-minded individuals.
Inevitably, the carebears will be rich, so seed the bestest lewties on the most unforgiving realms, so trade will be worthwhile.
Quote:Original post by blackviper91
I guess the real problem is that people are so determined to be able to easily do everything in a game. If they want to raid a dungeon and they fail, they get mad because the game cheated them. If someone else is better in PvP, the game cheated them. If another player has more gold, the game cheated them. This could go on and on, but the idea is that players want to play an MMO where they are the best, with no work.
Big, huge point right there.
It's not the technology available, it's the psychology of an average player (customer) that prevents the games to evolve towards quality of challenge, rather than quantity of challenge. And as long as that remains the case, our collective creative hands are tied, especially when MMOs are concerned.
The necessity to compete on the market and sell a product forces games to indulge players shamelessly, rather than challenging them.
Quote:Original post by Merluche
Why hasn't any game that I know of offered yet an experience about having to interfere into someone else's online avatar? Why isn't there a quest to go and HELP someone? or Block someone from doing something? I mean someone REAL, who actually plays the same game too? Why aren't there negociation quests? Why aren't there any other way to interact with people than either kill or ask something from them? Specifically when either one or the other are meaningless in terms of interactions, given that PvPing is usually useless and gratuitous, and that buying something from a crafter won't help either the buyer or the producer, save in terms of property or combat efficiency?
Sad fact is, most of what you mention is not actually fun in practice. People get annoyed when someone blocks them from doing something or helps them to do something (reducing the experience they gain from whatever quest they were doing). You should look into metagaming, there are plenty of people who go around role playing in MMORPGs but they do so of their own will, rather than being forced to by the designers of the game.
Quote:Original post by Leo_E_49
Sad fact is, most of what you mention is not actually fun in practice.
Last time I checked, there were no universal rules for "fun". It would be perfectly fun to me, and a number of other people, if the balance and mechanics were right. I like screwing people up. I also like being screwed up and punished for making a bad move.
The sad fact is that it wouldn't be fun for enough people to warrant the success of a MMO game.
Quote:Last time I checked, there were no universal rules for "fun". It would be perfectly fun to me, and a number of other people, if the balance and mechanics were right. I like screwing people up. I also like being screwed up and punished for making a bad move.
The sad fact is that it wouldn't be fun for enough people to warrant the success of a MMO game.
This is perfectly fine as long as one has the tools to oppose the constrains. And genneraly you do. Since global chat will probobly stay forever. And you can always call you friends.
A fun senario would be. Mighty worrior captures a well looking young female of a diffrent race. And then be supprised when she summoons 2 giant golems to bash his head in.
An other thing about the sad development of mmo is the rollercoster model that is used. As alevel 5 i wow you cant play with your friends who are level 20. Noir does the level 20 people get zero out of helping you. Also a level 20-70 character can gank level 5 people without problem.
For one thing i dont belive in relaying so much on levels but more in actual avatar skills. I really liked Old Asherons Call modell. Were you could build up your character with skills. and without the righ skills you couldnt even asess your opponent. But would have to try to figure out his level and streanghs.
also sure there was some level restrictions on dungeons. But not that many and also a higher level would gain just as much xp as its fellow adventures. as long as all was above the level limit.
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