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Original post by Nytehauq By the way, by 'real time', I mean actual "press a buton, character reacts console game like action", the game world functions in the same way real situations do, without any breaks, or arbritrary rounds in combat. Like Devil May Cry 3. No MMORPG has done this before.

I think it's just a matter of perspective, really. Your idea of real time combat can be also viewed as combat with arbitrary rounds that are infinitely small. In this sense, MXO is doing pretty much the same thing, but they choose to expand the length of their round to 3-4 seconds due to both technical limitations --having to simultaneously update few thousand of players about everything that goes on-- and visuals requirements --each combat move performed by a character actually takes time, and needs to be shown-- ... plus, it allows for more elegant combat resolution, as without this sort of synchronization when you insert typical lag in the picture it becomes nearly impossible to reliably determine if player A hit that dodge/move button just in time to avoid the attack of player B etc... which in the long run is extremely frustrating and anything *but* fun.

I suspect if you got the round time down to ~1 second and hide the fact such rounds exist from the players, they'd never notice it's not "pure" realtime combat. For that matter, it'd be probably the best way of making such 'realtime' combat system, for all reasons and benefits listed above.

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Original post by Nytehauq Hmmm. Why does it seem that everyone that has an opinion that runs contrary to the ingrained concepts and standards of the game industry gets rated down? Esh. It's foolish, the industry is well too young to have these ingrained standards.

If you have been rated down, it's probably because you're complaining about these 'standards' without really analysing why they are there or suggesting real solutions to them. Anyone can rant, but not just anyone can improve upon the status quo.

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By the way, by 'real time', I mean actual "press a buton, character reacts console game like action", the game world functions in the same way real situations do, without any breaks, or arbritrary rounds in combat. Like Devil May Cry 3. No MMORPG has done this before.

That's because they can't. It's not about bandwidth, it's about latency.

I also doubt that any company is going to pay enough for advertising space to equal a $12 per month per player. By the way, the ad might get viewed millions of times but it'll only be one or two hundred thousand people, and the click-through rate is going to be especially minimal.

I don't even think this is a matter of bandwidth or latency. RPG is developing a character and the skill of THE CHARACTER decides how the char performes in combat, not the skill of THE PLAYER.

so basically a RPG stands for rolling some dices to determine if an attack hits or gets blocked or misses.

(At least this is how I define RPG)

If it comes to the players skill having deep impact to the outcome of a fight I wouldn't call it RPG, but ego-shooter, ego-swordsman-killer or whatever :)

What about a DeuxEx-like MMORPG (in the gameplay sense, not in the setting sense)? It would be real cool since DeusEx was probably the best introduction of RPG stats into a completely action-like gameplay.

Morrowind does have an action fighting system, but it major sucks. There are 3 moves altogether, and many people just turned off the action system to make it simple (best hit counts). However, the idea is quite cool. I don't suppose that this could be implemented in an MMO because of the lag and that player location isn't clearly visible (because of the lag)

Looking for an RPG based on player skill, check out UTRPG, which is basically a mod for the Invasion game type in UT2K4 (I think it's in earlier version as well). Basically, it's the same fast combat as regular UT, but you level up getting experience from killing monsters, which gives you points you can use to improve your base stats like damage and armour, and also purchase special abilites like quad-jump. There are also artifacts you can find on the map. The servers remember your progress, so next you log on you continue. It's not very well balanced, since just surviving is almost impossible at low levels and once you get to a high enough level you're almost invincible, but it has basically all of the qualities you seem to be looking for.

tj963

Hmmm..., IMHO, you actually have taken a valid question i.e. why are all MMORPG based more on dice roles than player strategy/twitch skill?
But some of yur conclusions are just waaaayyyyy out there!!!

First, about the whole advertising thing. The rate you've given in your calvulations is the market rate for cost per click. However the scenario you've painted is actually cost per view. The price advertising are willing to pay for a single view is usually fractions of a penny. In fact on yahoo banner rates are between $35 and $65 per thousand views!(source:http://www.travelemarketing.com/banner-ads.htm). If you insert those numbers into your equations, and compare them to monthly registrations, the rest should become quite clear.

As for the fighting systems. The main issue is always lag! If you can come up with a technique of reducing lag to LAN levels (I believe single digits will be barely sufficient) then the problem is solved!. Even when playing quake on a LAN with 12 people you need a rather powerful system as server and respectable clients systems. (Otherwise every now and then a player may teleport a few inches, and in a game like that a few inches is quite a lot!!!)

Alternatively of course, you could design a slower fighting system. (Which, from the previous poster's description, is what Matrix online tried to do, but in thier case IIUC,they still didn't remove the dice only weighted it based on choice, or had both of you choose your moves at the same time, turning it into rock, paper, scissors).
In Street fighter for instance, some moves had to be seen and reacted to in a 60th of a second (about 20ms)!

Something I wonder though. In most FPS multiplayer stages, the map and all the models are held locally. thereby allowing the bandwidth to be used purely for positional and status data. In some MMOROGs, you actually see the world loading polygon by polygon. which probably means they streaming the info to me. In that case won't storing stuff locally improve much of the lag??

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Original post by thelurch Alternatively of course, you could design a slower fighting system. (Which, from the previous poster's description, is what Matrix online tried to do, but in thier case IIUC,they still didn't remove the dice only weighted it based on choice, or had both of you choose your moves at the same time, turning it into rock, paper, scissors).

Yup, they have the dice rolls as part of the system which isn't imo a bad thing -- it adds _limited_ random factor that keeps things from 100% predictable, but the way you build your character and how you select to play the fight has far greater impact on the outcome.

It's worth noting this is not pure rock-paper-scissors system, though, that is, it's *not* like certain tactics you select *always* beat another certain tactic due to some hard-coded rules. Instead, the moves appear to have two stats: damage dealt if they hit, and 'combat score' modifier. E.g. an all-out attack does lot of damage, but adds little to the base 'combat score' while the power attack does lower damage but modifies your combat score by greater amount, and the block does no damage (obviously) but adds more to your score than any other tactics. Now, because the characters will have different 'base scores' which are determined by the character's stats and equipment, the random roll and the state the character is in (dazed, staggered, enraged etc) it's still possible for character with high base score to punch through the block of character with lower base, even though the modifier on fast attack is much lower than the modifier on the block... must say i like what they're trying to do with it, and it's short just 1-2 small modifications from becoming really tactical.

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Something I wonder though. In most FPS multiplayer stages, the map and all the models are held locally. thereby allowing the bandwidth to be used purely for positional and status data. In some MMOROGs, you actually see the world loading polygon by polygon. which probably means they streaming the info to me. In that case won't storing stuff locally improve much of the lag??

I don't think the world isn't stored locally in the MMO game (maybe except for some dynamically changing parts or stuff that's considered 'secret' content) It's simply the MMO worlds are *huge* in comparison to FPS games, and you just can't keep all this data loaded into memory at once. So some games load the info on the world around you dynamically as you move (Lineage II) while others like WoW or Anarchy Online have the world divided into zones and switch between these sets when you move from zone to zone.

Indeed. I've already factored in bandwidth cost per tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of players, and I already know that there's no publisher that would take on such an investment. This is, of course, why I'm developing the game myself. Publishers and development houses don't normally innovate unless they have a really big reason to, and it's more financially viable to keep the status quo and milk it for all its worth.

I'll start doing preliminary tests running a server off of my home computer and only for a few players. Naturally, I don't have the finances to pay for a full fledged project (well...duh...no one does, save for actual corporate entities), but I'm quite sure that with enough work an painstakingly perfected code, it's possible to develop the game I have conceptualized. Were I to define every aspect of the game in enough detail to dispel ALL disbelievers, I'd A) Take up about two thousand pages of text, and B) Be giving away valuable code.

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Were I to define every aspect of the game in enough detail to dispel ALL disbelievers, I'd A) Take up about two thousand pages of text, and B) Be giving away valuable code.

Look, I wish you the best of luck and all, but you haven't given us any reason to believe you have 2,000 pages worth of ideas in your head for this to work. You haven't really addressed any of the legitamite concerns anyone has brought up. You don't need to write 2,000 pages on everything, how 'bout you just post a couple pages on how you're going to deal with lag. Is your plan just "more servers and proccessors", or do you really have a way you're going to implement realtime interaction with so much less lag it'll work with 200,000 players at once. How are you going to ensure with your "just sending keystrokes" system that everyone is seeing the same thing? What does your system have that every other online game doesn't, because just about every MMORPG does basically anything signficant server-side too? Every FPS I've ever played has lagged up with 15 players or so at times, and those are professionally developed. What makes your system 10,000x less laggy, so it can deal with 200,000 players at once? Obviously more computers, but are you really planning on just using 10,000x more computers? If so, how are you going to keep communication within all those computers efficient?

We're not trying to be negative or anything, just let you know what sort of task you're undertaking. If you legitimately think you can do this then by all means go ahead. Anytime you post about it people are going to tell you why you can't do it, but if you do it you can prove us all wrong.

And just another comment about why your ad system is flawed. I was saying you could maybe get a 1-5% clickthrough rate. I retract that. Websites get 1-5% clickthrough rates. That's because it's very easy to multi-task while browsing the internet. You can click that interesting looking ad and go through it while you're still at your original site. But when your join an MMORPG, especially one with realtime combat, you're going to be paying attention soley to that. If this game is fullscreen, which I'm sure it will be, you won't even be able to switch easily between the advertisers site and the game. I'm sure you'd get an even lower clickthrough rate and make even less money. I'm not saying ads wouldn't be a decent way to make some extra money (maybe used to further develop the game?) but you'd certainly need a monthly fee comparable to the other MMORPGS (if not more, to deal with your higher requirements as a realtime combat MMORPG).

Just a small follow-up, re: the real time combat thing in mmo... apparently Dungeons&Dragons Online ( http://www.ddo.com ) is heading this route as well, with the player aiming at their targets by rotating the view with mouse, while keys are used for movement, attack and manual blocking, mich like in the FPS games... with the PnP rule set crunching numbers somewhere under it all.

I'd guess they get away with the lag issue easier than in other mmo games since the adventures generally take place in instanced areas... IIUC their system, that is.