Is part of the problem that combat is your only real sensible road to victory, and that usually everything else is (in contrast) boring?

In Star Wars, for instance, yes there were epic fights. But there were also epic conversations and epic decisions.

I'm not a huge MMO fan, so this may be irrelevant if the point of MMOs IS the fighting.

(EDIT: Like the idea of only one or two supervillains, btw. I'd love to see more spectator aspects where you could watch their story arc. Lots of data recording in that, though...)

I would think that the perfect MMORPG didnt only have questing and killing in it. It would also have a strategy portion, a farming portion, a merchant portion, etc. Such a game would be massive and is probably impossible, since its 3 or 4 well-developed games combined into 1. The reason is because, you have different people playing different games in the same world, the immersion would be much more real. It would probably also need a Live Action team, to install constant new quests, new battles with monsters, new recipes, new towns, etc. 'Wish' attempted to do something like this, and I thought it would also do well to add immersion.

Omega, this is encouraging. In thinking about how to make MMORPGs more "RPG" and less "hack and slash" centric, I eventually came to the conclusion that the game would have to be multiple genres combined into one. Cities would need to be built and made to thrive, there would have to be governments, intrigue, diabolical entities to drive the plot and create conflict.

Could it be that the future of MMO's will welcome players from all genres and styles? People who enjoy SimCity will have a role. People who enjoy mysteries and political intrigue will have a place. PvPers and people who enjoy fighting genres will have a place. It's an interesting concept, I think.

Miserable: also an interesting point of view. There seems to be a conflit between what being a "hero" really means. In a traditional RGP your character is pre-made and you simply guide them through the game, sometimes making decisions, but in the end you defeat evil and save the world. Along the way lots of stuff happens to your character, and you can relate to it and the story.

In an MMORPG you build your own character from scratch. In both, your character becomes more powerful as you play, but unfortunately the gameplay of MMORPGs doesn't encourage people to develop their character's personality and backstory or become immersed...it only encourages players to become powerful through the acquisition of items. An MMORPG player would never turn down a piece of equipment because they are good and the entity offering it is evil. They would always take the item because better items equate to "winning." In these games every character is essentially the same: all are motivated by greed and power. Players do not create and then take on the role of their characters, their characters necissarily take on the role of their real life counterparts.

To me, real RPGs are like reading a good book and "getting into" the protagonist. This almost never happens in MMORPGs.

Guildwars does what you want since the quests are all instanced the game plays more like a tradional single player rpg. Liek phantasy star online before it. No monthly fee is icing on the cake. even better yet is you can role play all you want while in town with other players, and in yoru party with other players.

Wish was the ultimate though. NPCs controled by "storytellers" that created quests on the fly for the players. You could actual hold a converstaion iwth an npc that was being role played by the ST and the best part was they were actually quite good. too bad it got canceled during beta.

Most MMORPGs have plenty of role playing (especially WoW with Roleplaying servers), ist that some users dont role play and power level. Its really the gamers fault not the developers no this respect. As for epic battles? Had plenty of those in WoW.

Seems like you enjoy the cutscene infested console rpg which is more adventure then role playing.


To cut to the chase, such immersion costs money. Mutable relms found this out and I think its why it was canceled. Amny gamers cant be bothered role playing, they just want to kill everythign in sight (a problem in some of the live evente iwth stupid players). Thus game devs have catered to those people since they have enough of a majority. face it role players enjoy the games that are out now AND non role players do as well. Though neither is fully satisfied, they still play.

Again go get guild wars, its exactly what you are looking for, if its storyline, "epic" battles, and scripted sequences.

Also try face of mankind, the player generate the content (ie missions/quests). its early beta, but allows ppl to role play quiet effectivly. Actually a great study of human society and social behavior that game is.

an update on my idea, im not sure this would help role playing but the best way to make the world more epic(and about the only cost effective one) is to make players into heroes, merchants and villains and pit them agents each other but more creatively than walking up to each other and attacking. The only real technical challenge to this is in most games the player reacts to changes in the world while in this setup the world would change according to the action of the players. Like I said in my last post a good example would to let a powerful player build a tower, summon monster to it and attack nearby town. Then the Npc’s will realize their being constantly attacked, they could try to fight back and look for adventures to fight the player villain and bingo, you have a player versus player quest dynamically generated. In addition to having an unlimited number of unique quests available you have a whole new angle of game play, for example human villains aren’t just going to sit in the final floor of their tower waiting to be killed, one they realize someone’s after them they will send some monster to set a trap for them.
The basic idea is that since the whole point of a MMO is to be with many players they should focus more on player/player combat, but more creative than just siting outside a town and killing everone who leaves

you definatly need to check out Face of Mankind. fomportal.com its currently in open beta. This is similar to what they are trying to do. high ranking players create quests which lower ranking players can accept and carry out. There is NO player vs npc at all. Pur eplayer vs player interaction. This includes the economy, production of goods, and mining of resources.

Problems: high ranking players are not always playing thus dont create enough quests for players. So some factions have mroe quests then others, furthermore quests are timed so that hey are convient for the creator, not the rest of the players. Being a european based game, the su players get the shaft due to time differences.

Time zones affect effectivness of player created quests. Players can move up in rank, but only players doing quests (currently i dont think the game even has that working yet). Since quests favor high ranking players mates, other players get nothing to do except be annoying.

The game becomes boring VERY VERY quickly when there are not standard quests to do. Player quests are fun and all, but a few genric quests are needed to players have something to do when the high ranking players are not doing anything. Plus the high ranking player will make quests HE thinks are fun, not the other players. Sure the every wants in while quest that is grand is great, but doing them all the time gets stale. even worse are the boring quests that have to be, and normally would be done by NPCs (ie patrol an area).

This of course may just be their implementation needs work. Systems like this are great if the players cooperate, unfortunatly until you get to open beta you wont realize how crappy what sounds so good on paper player quests can be.

Also your idea of NPCs fighting back, that requires great AI (costs money) or someone to run the NPCs (costs money). Furthermore ranking players on level is thrown out the window. Eventually everyone will become high level and the system falls apart. This is on area Face of Mankind shines. there is no levels at all. Combat is done via a FPS mode (like Necron before it) so that players never need to level up. Thus there only goal is to be the story, live the world, complete teh missions in hopes of eventually attaining the high ranking status (which of course could easily be controlled via in game elections and such if needed). Perma-death was even added if you dont make sure you buy clones or clone insurance.

Eventualy a company will get a new system with dynamic content that players help create. A time where not all the players can get to slay the dragon and save the princess, when your deeds get recorded into ingame news papers and libraries. When players can control the story with their actions. Wish almost made it, but the timing was bad (open beta when WoW AND EQ2 just got released? thats just asking to fail).

I had a long plug of my own game project that has elements of RPG, RTS, PvP with multiple mini-games inside (driving, melee fighting, hacking, gambling)..but I erased it.

Sufficed to say, the popular games of the future will incorporate multiple genres into the same game.

You obviously haven't played World of Warcraft yet.

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Original post by PenanceWhy is it that most MMORPGs seem to lack an epic feel to them? In my mind, that's what makes RPGs great, is the sense of immersion.

I do agree that it is the sense of immersion that makes RPGs great, but an epic feel has nothing to do with immersion, per se. Personally, I'm sick and tired of games with an epic feel (as in the world is basically a big idyllic place and there are great, noble heroes to fight the evil, fiendish villains who try to make the world an unhappy place and the main character is so heroic that all level 10 or less commoners faint on sight; and then this paradise is so mystically infested with attack-on-sight fight-to-death creatures that you simply can't avoid). At times, an epic feel might create a very out-of-character situations.

Whenever a game starts to be too obviously "epic", I am no longer immersed. Then again, I could easily be immersed by a game that is overly mundane, without an epic feel, but rather the feel of exaggerated realism (or film noir). Something that is at the other edge of believability. Being able to carry seven suits of plate armor and fifteen long swords is not believable, but overly epic. Winning a fight by throwing sand into the foe's eyes and then backstabbing him with his own dagger is not epic, but rather convenient. And when was the last time you could actually run away from a boss fight and still be able to continue the game (aside from "random boss fights"; even in e.g. Diablo II you need to kill the main bosses at least once in order to advance)? Running away is not epic, yet as Sun Tzu said, "he will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight".

Being epic is a property of style. Immersion comes from within the player and thus doesn't imply an epic feel. Different styles immerse different people, and usually true immersion requires a lot from the imagination — ok, the boss didn't say anything. So what? Let your imagination fill in the rest. That being said, ...

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Things missing in WoW: 1) The bosses don't ever "talk" to you. There's no interaction. They are not antagonists, they're simply "mobs" you farm phat lewt from. You don't encounter a boss multiple times (they never get away, they never kill another NPC in front of your eyes, they never steal anything from you or destroy something valuable to you.) 2) There's rarely any special music to highlight the battle. This would go a LONG way to making the game feel more alive. 3) Timing, anticipation, backstory. You do a quest line, and sometimes the quests will be related in a meaninful way, but usually it just ends up with the NPC saying "Oh, by the way, this one guy did something naughty, go kill him!"

...these things could certainly increase the immersion of the game, but they don't need to be epic or pre-written (as in parts of a fixed plot). Then again, you implicitly imply that all bosses are inherently evil and ready to fight to death; how about if the boss dropped on his knees and started to beg for mercy?

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Original post by Miserable That's a very strange point of view, Penance. The label Role Playing Game implies that it is a game in which you take on the role of another character—something that you surely have more room to do in a world with other humans than when limited by scripted events and dumb NPC's! Final Fantasy style games, for example, don't really offer much in the way of role playing at all. (That said, I am a great fan of games like FFVI and Chrono Trigger, and I have no interest in MMORPG's.)

I agree with this point of view wholeheartedly.

Roleplaying is something the player does — as such, roleplaying requires that the player actually wants to roleplay. As a designer, you can directly affect the character, but only suggest to the player. If the game forces you to make certain choises (one of such enforcements is to start dictating what the character is supposed to be like), the player might eventually lose interest and immersion and will start to ruleplay (or rollplay) instead of roleplaying. When people ruleplay, they are more interested in the gameplay and game mechanics (which isn't bad by itself) than the actual game world itself.

The problem with games with a large amount of players (such as MMORPGs) is that not everybody wants to roleplay. Some people want to ruleplay, i.e. play the game for the great gameplay, for victory or points or whatever goal they have set for themselves, not the immersion itself. And as already stated plenty of times, immersion can't be forced. You can only encourage the player to explore the world and find out things. MMORPGs can be immersive, provided that the players really wanted to be immersed. Whether MMORPGs can be epic is no the point here, in my opinion.

Actually you could say that the term "Role Playing Game" is a bit of a misnomer, mostly because it is usually used as a synonym for "a game with a prewritten plot and some degree of character development and a battle system".

I think that if people truly do want epic style MMORPG's then the genre is going to have to push more in the direction of Neverwinter Nights, where players become GM's. This is what I am pushing for with my own project.

Granted, Neverwinter Nights is not particularly a MMORPG as it only caters for a small number of players (relatively), but I think it is definitely the way forward. No company could possibly hope to release as much content as could be created if the players were given the ability to do so. All we need then is a way to control the custom content and ensure that we don't get rogue GM's that make the game dull/annoying/etc and to ensure that the game has a certain level of continuity, all of which I believe can be catered for given a good game design.

I think the benefits far outweight the disadvantages. With a player GM you could allow for actions outside the capability of the engine by having the GM determine the outcome and tinker with the item properties/NPC's/terrain/etc to enact the outcome. GM's could also help create a rich and dynamic storyline, ensure the game is never the same, would not cost anything to maintain as the player GMs would be doing it for fun. I don't see how anything artificial could even come close to a human in control, so why don't developers focus on this method, perfecting and refining it and saving a lot of work in the long run, and possibly creating a much more flexible game along with it!

Well it makes sense to me at least! Any thoughts?