quote:Original post by Vanquish b) lack of innovation in interface.
Right now with the way MMOs are scripted there are basically only 9 things you can do: kill, protect, collect, trade, deliver, combine, destroy, type text, or pilot a vehicle.
That''s it. Very very limiting. My wife plays a lot of mystery games like Nancy Drew, Uru and the like which arent online games, but have story-driven interfaces that are part of the environment and the game. One of the things that is needed to save MMMOs is more interaction with the actual gameworld via interfaces like computer control panels, bombs to diffuse, levers to switch on and off...i mean you can think of an infinite number of them and they all make the game much more immersive...which is the strength of an MMO. Living in the world.
Interesting that you should mention that. There''s an MMO design that I''m almost constantly almost working on a prototype of, and one of the things I''ve developed in it is a completely minimalist interface. Most of the time, the only GUI you have is a red bar along the top of the screen; all interaction is done through movement keys (forward backward left right jump crouch strafe, and that''s about it) and the two mouse buttons.
To pick up an object, you look at it and left-click. When you''re holding it, you left-click to bashWith/attack/use it, left-click-hold-release to throw it, and right-click to drop it. If it''s an interactive element that you can''t pick up, such as a lever (and oh, yes, there will be levers... great big ones, with knobs on the ends), then left-click will be ''use'' and right-click will be ''alternate use.'' Simple.
Of course, my whole design is pretty atypical of MMO games, so it''s not terribly relevant.
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"Shaders are not meant to do everything. Of course you can try to use it for everything, but it's like playing football using cabbage." - MickeyMouse
Funny, I had the same idea for a system (just FPS with mouse) - however for very complex equipment, I was thinking of a gesture based interface.
What about inventory though? People like to keep stuff.
Anyhow, my approach was this: you start out with dick-all. Naked on a plain. There is no stuff - things are made by getting basic objects (bones, rocks, jewels, etc) and using gestures on them (shear a sheep for wool, make rope, get sharp rock and use it to carve bow, make bow, make arrows, etc etc etc.) Eventually magic or AI slaves/labour creatures could be used to automate processes.
Some old friends and I were discussing this last night in IRC, and we figured that one of the main issues of boredom is no noticable "passage of time" in the game.
That is to say, nothing ever really changes in the environment, it''s always the same. Sure you may have quests to do... but when do they actually affect anyone other than yourself and your party?
Though I only played Asheron''s Call for a few days, these guys are fans of it, so maybe they''re a bit biased, but they said AC *did* seem different because of all the content that they added every month.
Why hasn''t anyone else done an AC-version of a MMOG? But noo.. let''s follow EverCrack''s method. Grr.
I''ve played UO, EQ, DAoC, JumpGate, EVE, and recently, Horizons. My co-workers keep trying to get me into City of Heros, but I''ve noticed they are talking less about the game as time goes on. In fact one even admitted he''s getting bored with the game, as it''s just all combat. Which is my original estimate of the game; Once the new-car smell wore off, you''d be shuttling it back to the lot.
I had more hope for a game like JG or EVE, but their implementations were fairly broken. Considering that all three recent space-sim MMORPGs have basically taken a nose dive, I''m not sure the idea is doable. At least without some sort of radical change in the game mechanics. (And then it might not be much of a space-sim anymore...)
I too get tired of the Progress Quest-like gameplay. That design is intentional. If a game shows you everything in just a week, then there''s no way the publisher can continue to make money from your $12.95/mo subscription. So, to me, I feel like a lot of MMORPGs artifically limit how far and fast you can grow. And no matter how well the game tries to hide that, I still see numbers and progress meters. All there just to keep me enslaved so I will shovel out another month''s worth of money.
Horizons was fun until I reached around level eighteen or so. And then the newness wore off and I saw many, MANY hours of killing mobs until I could level up. The game was even less interesting than DAoC, since like in early UO, you could be a one-man tank in Horizons. At least in DAoC you had to find other people to work with in order to make an effective mob/player hunting team.
I dunno. I don''t think I will ever be that interested in MMORPGs as long as I feel the game is just trying to hang on to my monthly subscription with simple level treadmill gameplay. I think I''ll just stick to small-time multiplayer. I still have fun with Battlefield 1942 or even Team Fortress Classic, and that game is ancient.
The interface and monster ai isn''t what makes them boring, to me. It''s the lack of progression.
What these games need are the forces of good and evil battling for control. How about hiring some full-time writers to lead both sides?
Not everyone wants to play the knight, and that should be a limited position anyways. You should be able to take a place at the King''s court and conspire to overthrow it for the other King. If a town is attacked by ogres, you shouldn''t be able to spawn there. The ogres should attack NPCs, PCs, destroy villages and just try to take the town over. They should have the ability to succeed.
Well, I''m going to dump an idea I had in another game dev forum over here: A backstabbing, violent, competative FPS RPG concept.
Here''s the topology. First of all, you network several servers together, each of them running one or more maps. You set up one as the "metaserver" that holds all the player attributes/inventory, or store them in a distributed fashion. Travel between worlds is by teleport gate. Connections to servers you have left recently are kept live in a minimal, passive mode, free to be broken by the server or client if it should need the resources, so that you can quickly move between servers if you need to. Possibly, when approaching a gate, the connection could be attempted pre-emptively. One barrier would be that different servers would have different player-limits, so locations of high-importance would have to be stored on more robust connections.
Now, the concept: first of all, this is a PK game. When you join the game, you arrive as a "freeman" - you pick your starting selections (depending on the gamestyle, that might be class, race, stats, whatever - details). You are not affiliated with any faction, simply owning your own. You arrive in one of many Temples, which are the spawn locales - they are the non-combat zones - everyone in there is unarmed and invulnerable. At this point you may try to a) build a team from other people or b) join a larger faction. The system is similar to standard Cube''s teamplay, except that a) teams are despotic - their founder is in charge, and b) you may only join a team if invited by a founder or one of his appointed lieutenants. Individual players may enable and disable team-damage at will, and killing the team-leader will let you take his place as the ruler of a team, even if you were not previously a member of said team. Team leaders may kick any member of a team off of a team, and lieutenants may kick off any non-lieutenants. At any time a player may leave his team to found a new one, or join an existing team if invited. Thus, backstabbing is encouraged - you may take control by killing the team leader, or you may quickly form a competing faction to a previous team by forming a new team and inviting some of your cohorts into it. So, treason, etc. is part of the game and designed in.
Now, the objective: the only freely available respawn points are in temples. Temples have many exits, both public and hidden, so that leaving them shouldn''t be too much of a spawncamp. Alternately there are castles, which work like nodes from UT2k4 - you take a castle standard and thus your team owns the castle and can then spawn there. Ultimately there is the Palace. The palace contains the throne, which is the ultimate objective of the game - whichever team controls the throne is racking up victory points, which represent how successful your team is. The leader of the royal team is the King, and they are getting double. So, there is incentive for everyone in the game to kill the king, but to balance that he has powers beyond those of normal players.
Victory points could come from other thigns as well, such as killing large monsters or important players, or maybe just getting some points to compensate for being a late joiner. Note that victory points aren''t experience points - they determine who''s the "winner" - not what goodies and powers you get.
So, we have a free-form Domination structure. Next, we base it in a traditional FPS/RPG setting - the landscape is dotted with monsters, ruins, crap like that to explore, so small teams of adventurers can go freelancing and collect stuff and level up, without having to worry overmuch about running into the higher level players. Equipment is divided into two categories - personal items, such as armour, charms, and small hand weapons, and heavy equipment, such as large weapons, shields, etc. Heavy equipment breaks easily and wears out, so it must take constant attention and it comes and goes quickly. Personal items last long, but tend to be weaker. The idea is that you lose the heavy equipment when you die, but it comes and goes easily, so its not a big deal. Personal items are much trickier to lose, like skills and levels. Things, or specially powered players, can steal them, but its not easy.
The King gets special abilities to damage players to their more sensitive parts (skills, levels, etc) to discourage dissent. Remember, the King can be dethroned two ways - he can be killed and supplanted by an enemy or teammate, or his team can lose the Throne. Plus, the Royal team has another incentive not to infight to much: while they''re bickering, someone could take the Throne.
If the victory points were divided up equally among those who owned the throne (with the King getting the biggest piece tho), then the leaders of the royal clan would have serious incentive to thin their ranks of treacherous and useless people, who could then go and form their own competing faction.
There can even be "bindings" you can trade for, such as the promise that a player cannot hurt you, or a "apprenticeship bond" that he cannot be on a team without you being on that team with him (and any damage done to you by his teammates are dealt to him as well).
Finally, the lay of the land is such that the best pickings are around the castles - the Palace has heavy artillery to defend her, but not much opportunity for self-improvement. The temples are based in newbie-land. So teams, (or even individuals) do well to find and take the castles and hold them as a base of operations from which to adventure, and hope that a clever thief doesn''t sneak in and take it from them while they''re out.
Because of the game''s focus on defense, hiring and controlling monsters/guards would be a good feature.
And of course, just for the epic-dragonslaying - all the castles/palaces start out guarded by somewhat powerful creatures, so players have to clear them out before claiming them.
Just reset the game once a week, or even every few hours to keep it fresh. Keep the scoring and information individually based (individual scores, rankings, etc) rather than team based to keep the players thinking as individuals. Thus, you have a moving, twisting setting. A player reconnects and finds out who the fuck is in charge of his world, and might be surprised by the state of politics.
If your wondering where I got the idea for such a mean, backstabbing game, play Munchkin - its a card-game RPG about levelling up and backstabbing your teammates. Also has good balance ideas - the most powerful players are obviously so, and are winning, so losers tend to gang up against them. Also, the weakest players automatically get everyone else''s discards. Just food for thought.
You guys probably find MMORPGS boreing because you dont RP in them.
I find MMORPGS the best games around. Every year new MMORPGS are showing their faces and soon i see VERY INTERACTIVE worlds. THe people who say MMORPGS are not fun should go play a game that dosent require patience like FPS games ill be pissed if they make an MMOFPS (planetside) who wants to pay to shoot a gun at people when u can pay once and get online and shoot at people.
Another thing someone mentioned LAG.. Ive never had lag in a professional MMOPRG.
I love getting groups together and hunting hours on hours levling up. And then spending my money that I earned crafting or building my house up in DAOC. I also find RVR very relaxing when I am bored.
The only downside to MMORPGS is the fact everyone and their brother has the max level character and never ever wants to help anyone new.
DAOC is a great game I still play off and on now for 4 years Horizons Is a game I loved when I first played it but then started to dislike because its just not very good, great crafting sytem but beyond crappy combat system.
quote:Original post by Sansui You guys probably find MMORPGS boreing because you dont RP in them.
Oh, that is slightly amusing, but it cannot get around the boredom that inevitably appears.
quote:I find MMORPGS the best games around. Every year new MMORPGS are showing their faces and soon i see VERY INTERACTIVE worlds.
Interactive? Or Progressive?
quote:THe people who say MMORPGS are not fun should go play a game that dosent require patience like FPS games ill be pissed if they make an MMOFPS (planetside) who wants to pay to shoot a gun at people when u can pay once and get online and shoot at people.
Uh, heh, guess what... I spent years playing MMOGs. YEARS. But, know what else? I never really had much *FUN* playing them, even though I spent all that time doing so.
Planetside is enjoyable because you can just hop into action and leave anytime. Bam! Go help your empire attack a base, oops you have to go - *quit* and poof you''re gone. I love that. There is a distinctly different feel between fighting a hundred people at a base, and say...10-20. I love that type of chaos.
quote:Another thing someone mentioned LAG.. Ive never had lag in a professional MMOPRG.
Ever play UO in the early days?
quote:I love getting groups together and hunting hours on hours levling up. And then spending my money that I earned crafting or building my house up in DAOC. I also find RVR very relaxing when I am bored.
...I don''t. I dislike fighting idiotic AI, especially in games like EQ and DAOC. RvR would be fine.. except equipment isn''t equal, and you have to spend an insane amount of time just to *COMPETE* with the enemy. Also, you won''t get groups as an Assassin or Archer.
quote:The only downside to MMORPGS is the fact everyone and their brother has the max level character and never ever wants to help anyone new.
It''s not as bad a problem as you might think. I''ve seen many people help friends or just random newbies with buffs from a buffbot, money, etc.
quote:DAOC is a great game I still play off and on now for 4 years Horizons Is a game I loved when I first played it but then started to dislike because its just not very good, great crafting sytem but beyond crappy combat system.
DAOC hasn''t been out for four years. It was released in October of 2001, and since I bought it two weeks after release and played it through March of 2004, I think I know what I''m talking about. And I also know that your accusations of ''no patience'' are utterly incorrect.
I was playing the game, SURE -- A LOT even. But did I really ENJOY IT? Or was I just seeking the enjoyment that I might some day get from the game?
The point of a MMORPG is to have a structured experience together with other people. If you just solo, and don''t find groups, or if you just hang with the same 3 people rather than finding interesting new players, then these games probably won''t hold your attention. Perhaps the social aspect isn''t a draw for you. That''s fine. There''s lots of people who don''t like board games, or Canasta, or Quake, too -- choice is king!
That being said, I think City of Heroes does a bang-up job within the genre with its quick combat, non-existent spawn camping, and lack of Ph4t L3w+. They''re going to own the superhero-themed MMO market just like EQ owns fantasy (in the US).
- 2D/Pixel Artist - 3D Artist - Game Programmer - Ulfr Fenris
