Previous WuXia Discussions: - Representing Offline Hours in MMORPGs, Knowledge/Training - Death Systems in MMORPGs - The Quest for the Perfect PvP+ System - Magic and the Elements - Skills and Attributes For this post I'd like to take a step back from the specifics of MMORPG design and talk about the genre as a whole. Lots of people including me feel that the genre holds a lot of potential, not only for gamers but for the interactive media field as a whole. Here is why I think so. It will take me a while to get around to my point, and I'll be philosophizing a lot so bear with me :) This is not a discussion about your or my particular preferences in an MMORPG! This is purely a theoretical discussion about the nature of MMORPGs and its possible impact on interactive media.The Human, A Social Creature Bruce Lee once said, "To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person." As people, we are social creatures. We live in complex societies built upon cultures of infinite layers, and we define ourselves in the contexts of these cultures. Individualism, freedom, equality, free-will or choice, these are all concepts that are manifested from our collective existence. Emotions are born from interaction between individuals, and the majority of our perception is founded upon a relative comparison to the persepctives of others. In the past, games have always been limited representations of reality, in all aspects. And regardless of the complexity of their gameplay, in a sense games will always be representations. However, it is ironic that the social relationship, the thing we find hardest to define in our world, is the one that has pervaded online gaming without developers ever needing to lift a finger. Most would agree that the social aspect of an MMORPG is where both the appeal and potential lies for the genre. Furthermore, you could argue that in fact the social nature is the central appeal of the genre, where all other appeals are rooted. The draw of developing a character in a persistent world gains meaning in the context of a community to measure oneself against, and the struggle for power is given the utmost importance by the existence of competition. Underlying all of this is a social system of individuals who have goals, beliefs, and perhaps even a unique culture, all existent within a construct, a fantastical fabrication of reality. What does this young genre have to offer the gaming world with this social interaction? What does the creation of online cultures and societies mean for interactive media? A Very Easy Death? Aside from a social thirst, I believe there is one other thing that is clearly evident in the motivations behind human nature, and that is death. Mortality gives meaning to our lives, and from this mortality the importance of time is established. Money and materialism, love and friendship, these are all things that are important because of our mortality. Take for example our desire to want better jobs: how do we define a better job? By pay per hour of course, and whether or not a job is determined to be better is based on a measurement of money gained over time. The same applies for many other things. Why do we want to be in close proximity to our work, our families? It is because it takes less time to get to these things if you are closer. Why do we need to find love soon? Because we are getting old (running out of time). Time is indeed our most coveted possession, and it seems we never have enough of it. If the value of time comes from our mortality, then in an MMORPG it is possible that we will never be able to properly represent this need for time. The only alternative is to use the value of time given by our real lives (ie. the appraoching of our real deaths). Does this in a way distort the perception of goals and value in an MMORPG? Is it possible to somehow implement a different kind of death in an MMORPG? Regardless of the existence of a representation of death, do MMORPGs hold the possibility of a new scientific approach to understanding human nature through interactive media?

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Original post by PinFX Is it possible to somehow implement a different kind of death in an MMORPG?

In some games, other than MMORPG players will be just knocked out (KO).

But of course thats not very good alternative because it isnt realistic to just pass out from a fireball's blast.

I think, in general, the thing a MMO game would teach us most is to distrust others. This of course depends on how the game is implemented, and what type of people play it, and why they're playing it to begin with. What a game like this would need are rules of conduct and so on...i.e. "This game involves lots of RP. If you can't separate IC and OOC actions, don't play it."

I take my example of this out of a text MUD which has at least doubled its player base in the ~5 years I've been playing it. In the early stages, it was mostly fine. Then through heavy advertising, the player base exploded, and suddenly we were faced with a large group of players who didn't know the atmosphere and depth of the world the way we (the old players) did. As a result, there was a lot more lying and cheating, and most of it wasn't even based on IC events but the players' desire to be "the best" in a game where there wasn't *supposed* to be a way to "win". It resulted in several players being deleted/banned, and a general lowering of fun factor for those of us who treated it as a world in its own right.

At the same time, a player can learn a LOT about him/herself by playing a game where social activity is integral to the setup. (Which also means that players who are social should be rewarded over players who sit alone in a tower practicing or somesuch.) Through playing a couple of MUDs (which didn't even have MMO-level player bases), I've learned that I can, in fact, be ambitious when I want to, something I hadn't known previously. I learned that I can organize various efforts, when I understand what's going on and the personalities involved. It's just a lot easier for people to figure out facets of who they are and where they fit in, when they're thrust into a world where most of the complexities are understood better than the real world.

I also believe that the societies that spring up on online games can teach us a lot about understanding each other, providing we aren't 50 year old bald men who tell everyone we're hot 18 year old girls. There has to be a certain amount of trust before understanding can kick in. But in general, I can be friends with people online who care about my personality rather than how good I look or what color I am or which god I believe in.

As for value of money and such in games, I think a lot of it is simple greed. Some people will always have the "I wanna win" syndrome, no matter how the game is set up. Some people will always try to get whatever they can out of the system and damn everyone else, because after all "it's only a game". It's like these people turn a big beautiful complex game into nothing more involving than Monopoly, and cutthroat Monopoly at that. And the fact that I've yet to see a game of any type that had a decent economy doesn't help any. (Even single player RPG's suck at it. By the end of a lot of them, I'm sitting there with 3 million gp and nothing to spend it on.)

Note: Since the closest thing to a MMORPG I've played is Runescape (which IS full of 14 year old 1337 d00dz), I'm basing most of my statements on my experiences with various RP-based text MUDs. While these don't have nearly as many players, I think some of the aspects are still scalable and thus not totally out of place here.

Bleah, stupid login thingy. The above post was me.

One thing caught my eye in this thread straight away. The whole point about time being the most valuable asset we have. I just wanted to make a quick point regarding this before I head home from work today (so I wont ramble on here!!).

I think this puts a somewhat different twist onto the whole idea of permadeath. What if in a MMOG, everyone died automatically after a roughly (or strictly) set amount of time. Perhaps they can be resurrected as many times as necessary up until the point that they are "destined" to die. This then gives MMOG's a conclusive point where the characters achievements can be weighed up and some kind of score assigned... nobody feels hard done by as it applies to everyone and it is guaranteed not to happen a couple of weeks into having started a character (thereby annoying players). This then makes time an element of the gameplay.... you must achieve the most you possibly can in the time your character has left, and should you not get as far as you would have liked, you then have incentive to do better next time.

I could see how it could be annoying though to be constantly reset, but if enough new content were added to the game, it may be enough to keep it interesting, and the style of gameplay could potentially be different enough to be considered rather fresh.

Please note though that I'm not necessarily saying that people should adopt permadeath, but just that it relates nicely to this example of time not being so important in current MMO's.

There are a few things that I see that can take MMOs to the next level:

1) Real, good AI. Not just better combat AI, but better overall AI making NPCs more than just targets and tools.

2) Dynamics of the world. This way players can have a more lasting impact upon the game, build something and see how their actions affect everything around them, not just be the first (of 1000s) to kill a particular target.

3) Better social tools. The current systems out there are pretty good, but to improve them and make the players have more of a reason to play would "suck them in" more.

It sounds bad, but MMOs are not about the role-playing aspect, they're about making money and getting the players addicted. The best way to do this is to really pull the players into the world and make it part of their RL a little more than it is. Give them something they can change, make the interactions with NPCs more realistic (pitiful currently) and give them greater tools to interact with the other players (have messages stored and sent via e-mail daily to the person's registered e-mail address or something similar) or even possibly allow it to push to a messaging medium (yahoo messenger, AIM, MSN Messenger...) and the player will have the game in front of him in some aspect more frequently.

These are just my thoughts though. Death systems? Worthless and are only ways to balance how bad you punish the player for bad judgement. Wasting their time is the worst punishment. Waste enough of it and you'll see them punish you in return. That's why I prefer small death penalties (enough to make them regret their mistake), but not so much that you end up frustrating them and making them want to quit altogether. That's what so many suggested death systems I will always argue against. PvP? Only serves to force the players to work against each-other overall, thus destroying the tenet of a social system.