About the asheron''s call example, the PVP servers are so empty not because it''s not implemented well, not because all players hate pvp, but because it''s not a selling point to the game. The game box doesn''t say, "Amzingly well thought out, balanced, pvp system that provides fun and excitement for players who enjoy permanent death!"
I don''t play mmorpgs, because in my opinion, they are all the same, and aren''t fun to me. But I would seriously consider a strong pvp oriented game, for one thing because its new, and for another; because it could be more challenging and exciting. No, I''m not going to buy Asheron''s call, just so I can play on the one pvp server they have out of 8, I can see where they put their focus.
No, I''m not going to buy everquest, to play on their permanent death server, because that''s not what the game was intended for. If anything, the fact that there are pvp servers at all show that there are people who want those kinds of games. If NO ONE played on those servers, then the developers wouldn''t pay to keep the servers running.
The thing is, what is being proposed is a mmorpg that isn''t entirely aimed at the current market. It is aimed at a new market. You don''t think a game that''s different will get players from star wars, sims online, or AC2 to switch over? You''re probably right. But is there a possibility that it will create a NEW market? Very likely.
See, I know a lot of people who don''t play mmorpgs. Maybe this proposition isn''t what all those people who dont play them will want to play, but if we keep doing things the same way, then we will keep getting the exact same market. We will be fighting for players from other bigger companies from other much bigger games. By doing things differently, you have a chance of not getting anybody, but you also have a chance to get people who didn''t have a desire to play these games before.
One last thing: Deus Ex had a very interesting multiplayer mode, where you had skills that you could raise each time you got a kill. But when you die, you start from the begining again. It worked amazingly well, and isn''t all that different from a VERY short pvp permanent death online rpg.
Perma-Death and Continuity
Permadeath in a MMOG with PvP is the very issue that I have been trying to balance conceptually for several months. It has been a long line of delemas, but I have come up with some good ideas, some of which have been hit upon in this thread.
One is having a house for your character''s family. If a character dies, an heir can be created. The new character gets the house, all the goods and money that were stored in it, and some perks that take the edge of starting a character fresh. A variation that I am looking into is that if the new character is the same class as the dead one, he may start at a slightly higher level. Any serious accomplishments that the dead character may have completed can be related to the heir. (If the former had earned membership to a society, the latter could retain these freedoms by association.) Basically, the goal here is to allow players to maintain certain permanant achievements beyond the death of the character.
The other HUGE issue is making permanent death fair. This one is very tricky. It typically involves throwing in some unrealistic rules that restrict PvP interactions. EQ uses level caps to restrict uneven combat. This could be done through "zoning" of PvP combat areas. The system that I have adopted is (I hope) more even-handed than these rules. It is basically a safety mechanism that allows permanant death when the combat is fair, but when it is unfair, the loser goes into shock and loses consciousness instead. The means by which I set this up is under experimentation to find out where possible exploits lie, as there are ALWAYS exploits in these types of games.
For this safety mechanism to work, unconscious players cannot be attacked. This in itself may seem urealistic, however, it is fair in that it does take the player out of combat, and the player could be looted. Death or unconsciousness both have consequences. This is also team-based PvP to allow players to have safe areas, and improve trust among players.
CDV
One is having a house for your character''s family. If a character dies, an heir can be created. The new character gets the house, all the goods and money that were stored in it, and some perks that take the edge of starting a character fresh. A variation that I am looking into is that if the new character is the same class as the dead one, he may start at a slightly higher level. Any serious accomplishments that the dead character may have completed can be related to the heir. (If the former had earned membership to a society, the latter could retain these freedoms by association.) Basically, the goal here is to allow players to maintain certain permanant achievements beyond the death of the character.
The other HUGE issue is making permanent death fair. This one is very tricky. It typically involves throwing in some unrealistic rules that restrict PvP interactions. EQ uses level caps to restrict uneven combat. This could be done through "zoning" of PvP combat areas. The system that I have adopted is (I hope) more even-handed than these rules. It is basically a safety mechanism that allows permanant death when the combat is fair, but when it is unfair, the loser goes into shock and loses consciousness instead. The means by which I set this up is under experimentation to find out where possible exploits lie, as there are ALWAYS exploits in these types of games.
For this safety mechanism to work, unconscious players cannot be attacked. This in itself may seem urealistic, however, it is fair in that it does take the player out of combat, and the player could be looted. Death or unconsciousness both have consequences. This is also team-based PvP to allow players to have safe areas, and improve trust among players.
CDV
And here I thought this conversation was dead.
As the conversation has shifted away from whether players are looking for a MMOG with permanent death to whether PvP is any good I''ll try to focus on the PvP aspect to keep things simple.
The main theme I seem to be seeing is that people don’t play in the PvP areas because it is just implemented so poorly and if someone could come up with the perfect PvP system then there would just be droves of people clamoring to sign up and get into this brave new world.
Feel free to correct me if I''m wrong on this point because the whole rest of this post is going to be about it.
Lets look at everybody’s miracle of a game that shouldn''t have been successful but it was, Deer Hunter. It could be argued that the same type of audience may be out there waiting for a game which is based around PvP.
Now let’s think about a few things in terms of MMOG. The first of these being that they are expensive. I have DSL connection that I can''t play MMOG on if my roommate is downloading a file off the web. So if you want to host something that hundreds or thousands of people are going to connect to at the same time your not going to be doing this on your home cable/DSL connection. The last time I check leasing a T1/T3 line wasn''t too cheap and it will probably take a few of these to support the vast number of people signing on. But let’s not worry about that quite yet as you still need the Hardware to run the software on, customer support people and a hosting location.
Of course this really isn''t a problem as these people are coming out of the woodwork by the thousands to play this game. Or are they? If you create a game based on PvP combat they you are then creating a position where the more powerful your character is the better. In a dog eat dog world you don’t get big by thinking small. So you need players who are going to spend a fair amount of time in the game. Now let’s add to that the fact that your going to be charging people to play this game. Last time I check there were not too many casual gamers looking for a game where they had to invest large quantities of time and money to play. (Keep in mind that the deer hunter games retail for between 10-20 bucks where a regular PC game goes for anywhere between 40-60) So what you need is hardcore players to play this game not people who have never picked up a PC game before.
And then as a final point to consider let look at what the other non PvP options which are going to be coming up in the near future. Lets see, Star War Galaxies, Worlds of WarCraft, Sims Online, Asheron''s Call 2 just to name the biggest players.
So in closing. What you are suggesting is to make a type of game which requires large amounts of capital (a MMOG), which therefore requires a large player base. This player base needs to come from players who will to devote a lot of time to the game and shell out money for the game every month (these are what we refer to as hardcore players). And you want to compete with powerhouse companies which don’t have the perfect PvP system but will have hundreds of thousands of players. Can the perfect PvP game be made? Sure it can. Can you put it into a MMOG? Sure you can. Can this game be successful? No.
Now I''m sure your just itching to get your response up but try to put some though into what you are basing your assumptions off of. People didn''t just get the idea that people might play MMOG. The initial games were based of successful MUD''s and the desire to bring the collective adventure from D&D online. So go ahead and say that if you make the perfect PvP system then people will come but back it up with some real life examples where real people have done this before.
As the conversation has shifted away from whether players are looking for a MMOG with permanent death to whether PvP is any good I''ll try to focus on the PvP aspect to keep things simple.
The main theme I seem to be seeing is that people don’t play in the PvP areas because it is just implemented so poorly and if someone could come up with the perfect PvP system then there would just be droves of people clamoring to sign up and get into this brave new world.
Feel free to correct me if I''m wrong on this point because the whole rest of this post is going to be about it.
Lets look at everybody’s miracle of a game that shouldn''t have been successful but it was, Deer Hunter. It could be argued that the same type of audience may be out there waiting for a game which is based around PvP.
Now let’s think about a few things in terms of MMOG. The first of these being that they are expensive. I have DSL connection that I can''t play MMOG on if my roommate is downloading a file off the web. So if you want to host something that hundreds or thousands of people are going to connect to at the same time your not going to be doing this on your home cable/DSL connection. The last time I check leasing a T1/T3 line wasn''t too cheap and it will probably take a few of these to support the vast number of people signing on. But let’s not worry about that quite yet as you still need the Hardware to run the software on, customer support people and a hosting location.
Of course this really isn''t a problem as these people are coming out of the woodwork by the thousands to play this game. Or are they? If you create a game based on PvP combat they you are then creating a position where the more powerful your character is the better. In a dog eat dog world you don’t get big by thinking small. So you need players who are going to spend a fair amount of time in the game. Now let’s add to that the fact that your going to be charging people to play this game. Last time I check there were not too many casual gamers looking for a game where they had to invest large quantities of time and money to play. (Keep in mind that the deer hunter games retail for between 10-20 bucks where a regular PC game goes for anywhere between 40-60) So what you need is hardcore players to play this game not people who have never picked up a PC game before.
And then as a final point to consider let look at what the other non PvP options which are going to be coming up in the near future. Lets see, Star War Galaxies, Worlds of WarCraft, Sims Online, Asheron''s Call 2 just to name the biggest players.
So in closing. What you are suggesting is to make a type of game which requires large amounts of capital (a MMOG), which therefore requires a large player base. This player base needs to come from players who will to devote a lot of time to the game and shell out money for the game every month (these are what we refer to as hardcore players). And you want to compete with powerhouse companies which don’t have the perfect PvP system but will have hundreds of thousands of players. Can the perfect PvP game be made? Sure it can. Can you put it into a MMOG? Sure you can. Can this game be successful? No.
Now I''m sure your just itching to get your response up but try to put some though into what you are basing your assumptions off of. People didn''t just get the idea that people might play MMOG. The initial games were based of successful MUD''s and the desire to bring the collective adventure from D&D online. So go ahead and say that if you make the perfect PvP system then people will come but back it up with some real life examples where real people have done this before.
You hit it MorganE with your last statement: "So go ahead and say that if you make the perfect PvP system then people will come but back it up with some real life examples where real people have done this before."
As far as I know of, nobody really HAS done this before. Good pvp systems have been tried in muds, but they don''t have the kind of market saturation we''re talking about. We DONT know that a pvp game will sell a ton, but what the thread was originally trying to do was hack up an in-the-works design which has PVP and permanent death in it. The plan may be to eventually sell it, I don''t know, but Oluseyi didn''t mention anything about the marketing of it, merely the design. This IS the design forum, not the marketing forum.
You seem to be absolutely sure beyond any persuasion that a pvp permanent death game, no matter how good the game or how well thought out the system, will utterly fail. This assumption may or may not be true, but since none of us have seen a succesful OR unsuccsesful game of this nature, it''s hard to tell. You did point out the rather empty asheron''s call pvp server, but this doesn''t prove very much as the game is not MARKETED to pvp players. Many games, movies, books, music, whatever have not done well due to bad marketing, while good marketing can make shit sell. Such as very good tv shows that get cancelled by being shoved around, not marketed well, and not given much of a chance. (Now and again, once and again, dark angel are a recent few)
I have seen this discussion before many many times. Somebody has a design that includes permanent death, they broadcast their ideas on a forum somewhere, and everyone says its a horrible idea. But these ideas continue to pop up over and over again. I think it''s worth a try, ANYTHING to make MMO''s less boring. I like the idea of the mmorpg, but none of the games I''ve played are really any good. At least these ideas, while not COMPLETELY original, are different from what is currently offered.
Now to the design:
The lizards sound like a cool idea, almost similar to a game I was working on about a year ago with dinosaurs, but Im not sure what should change between the parent and its offspring. It obviously needs to be at a slightly lower level, low enough that it should take at least a few hours to get back to your previous level. One thing you have to remember about pvp permadeath is that the higher death penalties WILL lessen the amount of playerkillers. Especially if you can''t TELL how much stronger your opponent is than you. Obviously you need to know the dangers of attacking monsters in the world so as not to take necesary risks, but between players? The weakest player should look strong enough to scare off most potential attackers. And with a good evade function you dont have to worry too much about being attacked.
If you have an energy bar for how fast you move, but you only make it go down when you attack someone, then the attacker will always be slower than the victim. Maybe the energy can go down at a slower rate when your running away than when your attacking. If there are a lot of foreground obstacles to hide behind, you should be able to lose them. So fights should only last to the point where the loser runs away. Those who fight and run away will live to fight another day! This can ring true in the pvp environment.
Unconsiousness is another thing to think about. If you go unconcious before death, and they get to steal your eq, then why would they keep attacking you until you die? It''s to no benefit to them, except a black mark on their consious. Sure it might happen, but with unconsiousness at least there is a chance there. And if there is no difference graphically between a dead character and an unconcious character, then they may think you''re dead anyway.
One more thing: if there are enough roaming mobs that attack in most places in the world, then not only is the pker trying to fight you, but they have to watch out for the monsters as well. Once they have your stuff off of your unconcious body, they want to get out of there to a safe spot as fast as they can, not wait around for a lengthy finishing move to be completed. And bad mobs shouldn''t attack an unconcious body either, cause they think your dead
In conclusion: there are a lot of ways to make this work, and there are enough proposals for this that it must be worth trying to work out. Dismissing it as something that will never sell is, well, I don''t want to call it silly, but it''s somewhat baseless as this is something that''s never been done before. Trying to cater for both the hardcore players and the casual players is difficult, and most games nowadays tend to just ignore the casual players. I think, even though you may think it''s weird, this system would benefit the casual players as it keeps everyone more or less on the same level. You die, you start over again. The further you get, and the more risks you take, the closer you are to dying. Casual players don''t venture off into the dark unknowns of the world or take big risks, and they run when they see someone trying to kill them for their newbie dagger, so they will last longer than hardcore players, although still won''t get as powerful. And finally you provide a world where feats can actually be admired, and being someone at a really high level will demonstrate the players skill a lot more than the levels of today''s games. You can really respect that level 50 warrior, because you know he didn''t just sit at his computer for 14 hours a day for a few weeks to get there, but actually EARNED those 50 levels.
Wow, long conclusion
Sorry I rambled so much everyone!
As far as I know of, nobody really HAS done this before. Good pvp systems have been tried in muds, but they don''t have the kind of market saturation we''re talking about. We DONT know that a pvp game will sell a ton, but what the thread was originally trying to do was hack up an in-the-works design which has PVP and permanent death in it. The plan may be to eventually sell it, I don''t know, but Oluseyi didn''t mention anything about the marketing of it, merely the design. This IS the design forum, not the marketing forum.
You seem to be absolutely sure beyond any persuasion that a pvp permanent death game, no matter how good the game or how well thought out the system, will utterly fail. This assumption may or may not be true, but since none of us have seen a succesful OR unsuccsesful game of this nature, it''s hard to tell. You did point out the rather empty asheron''s call pvp server, but this doesn''t prove very much as the game is not MARKETED to pvp players. Many games, movies, books, music, whatever have not done well due to bad marketing, while good marketing can make shit sell. Such as very good tv shows that get cancelled by being shoved around, not marketed well, and not given much of a chance. (Now and again, once and again, dark angel are a recent few)
I have seen this discussion before many many times. Somebody has a design that includes permanent death, they broadcast their ideas on a forum somewhere, and everyone says its a horrible idea. But these ideas continue to pop up over and over again. I think it''s worth a try, ANYTHING to make MMO''s less boring. I like the idea of the mmorpg, but none of the games I''ve played are really any good. At least these ideas, while not COMPLETELY original, are different from what is currently offered.
Now to the design:
The lizards sound like a cool idea, almost similar to a game I was working on about a year ago with dinosaurs, but Im not sure what should change between the parent and its offspring. It obviously needs to be at a slightly lower level, low enough that it should take at least a few hours to get back to your previous level. One thing you have to remember about pvp permadeath is that the higher death penalties WILL lessen the amount of playerkillers. Especially if you can''t TELL how much stronger your opponent is than you. Obviously you need to know the dangers of attacking monsters in the world so as not to take necesary risks, but between players? The weakest player should look strong enough to scare off most potential attackers. And with a good evade function you dont have to worry too much about being attacked.
If you have an energy bar for how fast you move, but you only make it go down when you attack someone, then the attacker will always be slower than the victim. Maybe the energy can go down at a slower rate when your running away than when your attacking. If there are a lot of foreground obstacles to hide behind, you should be able to lose them. So fights should only last to the point where the loser runs away. Those who fight and run away will live to fight another day! This can ring true in the pvp environment.
Unconsiousness is another thing to think about. If you go unconcious before death, and they get to steal your eq, then why would they keep attacking you until you die? It''s to no benefit to them, except a black mark on their consious. Sure it might happen, but with unconsiousness at least there is a chance there. And if there is no difference graphically between a dead character and an unconcious character, then they may think you''re dead anyway.
One more thing: if there are enough roaming mobs that attack in most places in the world, then not only is the pker trying to fight you, but they have to watch out for the monsters as well. Once they have your stuff off of your unconcious body, they want to get out of there to a safe spot as fast as they can, not wait around for a lengthy finishing move to be completed. And bad mobs shouldn''t attack an unconcious body either, cause they think your dead
In conclusion: there are a lot of ways to make this work, and there are enough proposals for this that it must be worth trying to work out. Dismissing it as something that will never sell is, well, I don''t want to call it silly, but it''s somewhat baseless as this is something that''s never been done before. Trying to cater for both the hardcore players and the casual players is difficult, and most games nowadays tend to just ignore the casual players. I think, even though you may think it''s weird, this system would benefit the casual players as it keeps everyone more or less on the same level. You die, you start over again. The further you get, and the more risks you take, the closer you are to dying. Casual players don''t venture off into the dark unknowns of the world or take big risks, and they run when they see someone trying to kill them for their newbie dagger, so they will last longer than hardcore players, although still won''t get as powerful. And finally you provide a world where feats can actually be admired, and being someone at a really high level will demonstrate the players skill a lot more than the levels of today''s games. You can really respect that level 50 warrior, because you know he didn''t just sit at his computer for 14 hours a day for a few weeks to get there, but actually EARNED those 50 levels.
Wow, long conclusion
Sorry I rambled so much everyone!
quote:Last time I check there were not too many casual gamers looking for a game where they had to invest large quantities of time and money to play.
The whole idea behind the game is that it does NOT require the investment of large quantities of time. That is merely an option. As gameplay comes before character growth, you can always choose to play just a 15 minute session. You just have the option of spending more time and developing your character if you so desire.
quote:And then as a final point to consider let look at what the other non PvP options which are going to be coming up in the near future.
Exactly: non PvP. Each and every current MMORPG, each and every future MMORPG, they all do pretty much the same thing. THEY suffer from the problem of sharing the same playerbase, but a different genre MMO would not really be affected by that quite as much.
Sure, when creating a game you need to think about things like playerbase etc, but at this point I think it's better just to create the game as the game should be created and think about such things later on. If you let yourself be influenced too much by 'customer satisfaction' (other than that playing the game should be fun) you're just going to get a game that is less than it could have been.
quote:Can this game be successful? No.
Personally, I think that's a little too narrow-minded. (but then again, I might be a little too open-minded) Plus, succesful is not one of the things I'm concerned about. I just want to create the product that I think it could be. I'm almost at the point now where I'm about to change 'think' to 'know' because the more time and effort we put into this project, the more I realize that it in fact is feasible.
SALUK
I think you pretty much said it all.
[edited by - Silvermyst on September 4, 2002 10:25:10 AM]
quote:Original post by Oluseyi
Okay, seriously. A colleague and I are working on a design for an MMO game in which the player controls non-human avatars (I''m intentionally obfuscating the details because they''re irrelevant). Our creatures age, deteriorate in health (from injury/disease as well as age) and eventually die, but we''re exploring options for continuity that would be acceptable and interesting/challenging to players. Our current model is to have the creatures progignere either via direct birth or laying eggs, which encodes the creatures "DNA" with suitable mutation/adaptation/evolution such that the offspring is not identical to the parent.
Comments, please.
How about a game where your character has sex with as many female NPC''s as possible, and when he dies he can continue playing with one of his children ? I would be interested in an RPG that would include that ...
quote:How about a game where your character has sex with as many female NPC''s as possible, and when he dies he can continue playing with one of his children ? I would be interested in an RPG that would include that ...
Fat chance
We''re keeping this tasteful. Personally, I couldn''t care less about all the sexual elements I''ve seen in games. I''m not a prude, but I don''t think a good game needs sex to sell.
quote:Original post by Oluseyi
Is this a reasonable model? Would it be interesting and fascinating or frustrating to you?
------------
All this talk about "PvP", "PvE" and "PKing" flat out bores me. I don''t play RPGs because I feel like I have little actual influence on my characters growth and development, generally only on his appearance and "level" (now there''s an abstract concept for you!)
Any concept, if designed well could be fun. Your idea has more than enough potential but I don''t think most people would accept it... initially! I haven''t played an RPG in about 10 years and I don''t take part in MMO games cause of all those stink-people-things ya gotta deal with. So, I really don''t consider you or I good judges of what RPG or MMO should be. Then again, how many people like us are actually out there that want a change. From what I''ve seen what people say in these forums, there is probably a huge vein that hasn''t been tapped yet.
Your concept can make for a good "save game" feature. When you create off-spring, you are in a sense, saving your game. This makes the save more objective and realistic rather than an abstract punch of the F2 key. The DNA concept is a nice twist. What is more important is how the rest of the game design fits around this whole concept.
One thing to keep in mind: add lots and lots of record charts! =) I used to play a lot of BBS door games. In all of those games, death was death. You restarted at 0. You''d fight your way to the top only to get demolished by another players quick strategy. You''d be frustrated but then you had the enjoyment of rebuilding your character for revenge. Even though you may have been killed, your name was on one or two top ten records for all to see. So, you may have died, but you were immortalized. Just a thought.
- Jay
"I have head-explody!!!" - NNY
Get Tranced!
quote:Original post by MorganE
Now I''m sure your just itching to get your response up but try to put some though into what you are basing your assumptions off of. People didn''t just get the idea that people might play MMOG. The initial games were based of successful MUDs and the desire to bring the collective adventure from D&D online.
But the first MUD ever was essentially a PvP and permadeath game. So without PvP and permadeath, there might not be any MMORPGs as we know them. And most D&D games are permadeath. The paradigm is not without merit, it just needs a careful implementation.
[ MSVC Fixes | STL | SDL | Game AI | Sockets | C++ Faq Lite | Boost | Asking Questions | Organising code files | My stuff ]
I think there is a couple of things people are failing to consider but I'll make another attempt here.
"Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it."
Everybody is saying , oh you can't look at those games from the past they weren't done right thats why no body played them. Everything, and I do mean everything has some basis for thinking the outcome will be successful. I've presented several resons why it wont be successful. Yet the only reason I not seen a single reason on which people are basing their assumptions for the success of such a design. Christoper Columbus sailed across the ocean because he could see the horizon was curved when looking across the ocean.
Everquest has 400,000 players but it is by no means a perfect system. Why did they invest so much into creating that game? Ultima Online had 200,000 players, that why. Why did Origin think people would play UO? Because millions of people already played D&D and computer roleplaying games and UO was a merger of the two.
So I ask you. What are you basing your assumptions off of?
For the next point I'm going to use a particurally long quote of which the full text can be found here:
A lot of people don't understand the fundamentals of the games development business. They don't understand technology limitations, development times, financial concerns or any of the other headaches of developing a new product. Their idea proposals say things like, "You would recreate New York City to scale and have 4 million unique looking and sounding individuals that you can interact with and you can have 500,000 of them on the screen at the same time when you join them in Times Square for the New Year's Eve ball drop. That's when the aliens attack and severely damage the city, so all of the buildings have to be half-destroyed as the city is plunged into chaos and eternal night. Then you and your band of 10,000 resistance fighters lead the charge with 50 different weapons and squad based tactics and the game would toggle between first person, third person, top down and map views" and on and on and on and on and on... You see what I mean? A vast majority of game idea submissions suffer from this problem. I call it "Newbie Ambition." Game Development is mostly about figuring out "what cool stuff you can do in a limited time period with limited cash."
And now I'm going to translate this into what I am seeing here.
We want to know if we can create a game where we want thousands of people to play. We will have the perfect PvP system where when people die they lose the investment they have put into their character this is ok however because people will have no association with their character. Were going to make a system based on a competitive PvP system and enourage people to fight each other which will therefore encourages people to play long hours to have powerful characters but people are not going to have to play long hours to enjoy the game. The people that cant play long hours can just stay in town and play safe in our game based around a PVP/premantent death system. And were going to make this a MMOG which costs tremendious amounts of money to create and run but we dont care if only a few people come and play it.
[edited by - MorganE on September 4, 2002 3:54:06 PM]
"Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it."
Everybody is saying , oh you can't look at those games from the past they weren't done right thats why no body played them. Everything, and I do mean everything has some basis for thinking the outcome will be successful. I've presented several resons why it wont be successful. Yet the only reason I not seen a single reason on which people are basing their assumptions for the success of such a design. Christoper Columbus sailed across the ocean because he could see the horizon was curved when looking across the ocean.
Everquest has 400,000 players but it is by no means a perfect system. Why did they invest so much into creating that game? Ultima Online had 200,000 players, that why. Why did Origin think people would play UO? Because millions of people already played D&D and computer roleplaying games and UO was a merger of the two.
So I ask you. What are you basing your assumptions off of?
For the next point I'm going to use a particurally long quote of which the full text can be found here:
A lot of people don't understand the fundamentals of the games development business. They don't understand technology limitations, development times, financial concerns or any of the other headaches of developing a new product. Their idea proposals say things like, "You would recreate New York City to scale and have 4 million unique looking and sounding individuals that you can interact with and you can have 500,000 of them on the screen at the same time when you join them in Times Square for the New Year's Eve ball drop. That's when the aliens attack and severely damage the city, so all of the buildings have to be half-destroyed as the city is plunged into chaos and eternal night. Then you and your band of 10,000 resistance fighters lead the charge with 50 different weapons and squad based tactics and the game would toggle between first person, third person, top down and map views" and on and on and on and on and on... You see what I mean? A vast majority of game idea submissions suffer from this problem. I call it "Newbie Ambition." Game Development is mostly about figuring out "what cool stuff you can do in a limited time period with limited cash."
And now I'm going to translate this into what I am seeing here.
We want to know if we can create a game where we want thousands of people to play. We will have the perfect PvP system where when people die they lose the investment they have put into their character this is ok however because people will have no association with their character. Were going to make a system based on a competitive PvP system and enourage people to fight each other which will therefore encourages people to play long hours to have powerful characters but people are not going to have to play long hours to enjoy the game. The people that cant play long hours can just stay in town and play safe in our game based around a PVP/premantent death system. And were going to make this a MMOG which costs tremendious amounts of money to create and run but we dont care if only a few people come and play it.
[edited by - MorganE on September 4, 2002 3:54:06 PM]
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