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Original post by PinFX I think dynamic questing systems and more fleshed out NPC systems are the solution. However, before you get there you really have to deal with heightening the range of risk associated with character development. There is no point in making a quest system and NPC system if 5000/5000 of your players go to the same NPC and the same Area to kill the same Monster so as to level as fast as possible.

With the system i have in mind this wont will happen but only sporadic.
And i dont think you really roleplay in bg och bg2 not really you are following a prescripted path and prescripted answerds and questions. And you cant just kill the fellow if you dont like him.

The only real problem a RPG that empisises RP is the economics. To get a large enough target audiance to make the company go around.

The next not solved problem is to make character development connected with RP and this is hard but not unsoveble.

And i want to lower the urge to hunt monsters. It shoulnt be easy and no "spawnpoints" were monsters just pop up is to exist.

so RPG get back their own title and rename others to Hack n Slash games.

Athos

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Original post by PinFX OK, like all other subjects spoken of in the context of an MMO, you MUST look at it holistically. It would be a huge mistake to implement a questing/NPC system without thinking about why people aren't RPing in RPGs in the first place.

We were having a specific discussion about one part of the system... in fact it was a digression.

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The reason for this in MMORPGs is that players play to become better than other players. "Developing the Character" no longer carries the role-playing connotation that it used to. "Developing the Character" is all about EXP/Hour now, that is the brutal truth.

Ahh the old "no numbers" solution. Notably discussed in Mu's Unbelievably Long and Disjointed Ramblings About RPG Design

Heard it. Dont believe in it. Not because Im a super power-gamer, but because I know human nature. Some person or group of people will lock down how killng x = 9000 xp points and figure out the system. You can make is super-convoluted but you are challenging people to figure it out.

At that point, you've killed the casual gamers because they wont know the road to fast xp and the game becomes tilted.

Then you have the frustration factor. If Im at level 36 lock picking but cant see that Im up against a lvl 234 lock, Im really gonna get frustrated.

Im not saying it couldnt work. MUDs have done this in the past and gotten away with it...but you would definitely have to give the player much more specific feedback from the world itself.

Just dont think you will ever get numbers out of RPGs.

[Edited by - Vanquish on May 14, 2005 5:59:25 PM]

one way to kill the maximum xp problem or all people camping 1 spot would be som system were you lerned upon situation. Ex: Ranger Tore loves hunting deer. He becomes very good at it, and it dosnt take long before he has masterd it. Now there is not anythign more he can lern about it. ( = no xp per kill ).

The no number solution. Some parts i think you can hide very well. Others not. For exaple weapons and items. It will be very hard for players to understand and know what to put on if thay dont know stats of items. But it could be a text responsiv sustem. Ex:Ranger Tore finds a ring, It shines. He puts the ring on his middle finger and he feels a fuzzy warm feling inside, like he would never freez again. ( Proection of frost ring ).

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To evolv the disscussion we are in.

How could you make a character advancemnt system be RP friendly?

I am thinking no numbers. At most %. Let age have an factor? as you evolve your character it gets old and might die?. So if you rush the game your character will die as soon as you reach "max level/max age" So players who take it easy will enjoy their characters more? Maby have a solution were you have to be very old to atain the knowledge needed to magic powers?

Personaly in a RP game i have been thinking of family structure and bloodlines and such. So dead characters advanment benefits the rest of the children of that family. And each player account is a family. and maby you could make offspring ( new chars ) with an other family to further advanced bloodlines. And bloodlines could become one of the cores for questing and player killing.
Maby 2 diffrent player familys can marry to create 1 family ( making marrige ingame to have a function ). This system would also mean that your own advancments dosnt matter as much as the familys advancements.


Athos

Two parts of your design sound like what they had planned for the MMORPG Mourning.

a) family traits get passed along - could be interesting, but unless you are passing those traits onto newly made characters, that would require permadeath. I hate permadeath in MMOs.

b)age / time - I think the next logical step from your age discussion is to limit the amount of advancement a player can gain by time periods. That is, for every 10 hours of gameplay you can only progress so far. I dont know how I feel about that. UO has that system (sort of), but I really hate the idea of limiting someone from advancing as quickly as they can.

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Original post by Vanquish a) family traits get passed along - could be interesting, but unless you are passing those traits onto newly made characters, that would require permadeath. I hate permadeath in MMOs. b)age / time - I think the next logical step from your age discussion is to limit the amount of advancement a player can gain by time periods. That is, for every 10 hours of gameplay you can only progress so far. I dont know how I feel about that. UO has that system (sort of), but I really hate the idea of limiting someone from advancing as quickly as they can.

Hmm permadeath can be a good thing if you feel you havent lost anything.
like if all your stuff ended up in the family stash or somthing.


And the age thingy. i was thinking more in the lines that thouse who advanced fast aged faster too and died sooner. If you understand how i mean.


Cant write longer answer right now night time and i have programmign to do.

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Original post by Vanquish Two parts of your design sound like what they had planned for the MMORPG Mourning. a) family traits get passed along - could be interesting, but unless you are passing those traits onto newly made characters, that would require permadeath. I hate permadeath in MMOs.

I like the concept of family trees, but no in the mmorpg environment. I think a fun game would be called Karma, which is a blend of an rpg/action game where you live for x amount of time, and depending on what you do, you re-incranated yourself into another being. The end-game would be reaching nirvana. ;). Think of the game like steer madness.

In all seriousness though, Bloodlines could be very interresting in the RTS environment. I would love to see benfits of building up a reign of kings across a campaign. However, I think this concept applies more to a game like Total War then AoE, however, it could be applied well.

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b)age / time - I think the next logical step from your age discussion is to limit the amount of advancement a player can gain by time periods. That is, for every 10 hours of gameplay you can only progress so far. I dont know how I feel about that. UO has that system (sort of), but I really hate the idea of limiting someone from advancing as quickly as they can.

Umm - I think in the way you phrased it is a bad idea. However, I believe it was wavinator or someone on his thread of recharing energies that you dont gain full expirence till you sleep, and this could be for prolonger periods of time (like 8 hours to get the full benfit).

As far as I read, 'planeshift', ( http://www.planeshift.it/ ) the free MMORPG (in development), wants to focus primarily on roleplaying. Unfortunally for the tech side they are not yet there - so their players are mainly going for monsters to kill ... most new players ask 'where is the mob`', 'how do I level here quickly?' and such ... so it seems that they are facing the problem of how the mainstream plays games of such genre. (because of how the mainstream games do work/are set up).

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One of the problems with current games (and in the past) is that there is not enough good visible indicators of 'reality' (no subtleties, sometime barely any differentiation). You would think that by now they could present (3D graphics, sounds, versatile dialogs) better sensory input to the players -- cues that are more like the real world (so players will naturally recognize them). Since games could not do this, they had to present numbers -- maybe sometimes ok for a Future tech game, but they didnt have digital readouts and lifebars in dungeons. Unfortunately subtleties (or better quality presentations or greater detail depth) require undelying mechanisms to decide what to show/present (more animations, facial gestures, voice inflections, more sounds, etc..).

Ok..first of all Anonymous...can you register :P

Now, back to the topic. I suppose there could be circumstantial indicators for health such as a blurry vision, a limp when you walk (both achieved with camera effects), not being able to hold up your weapon, running slower...

but that might be a reall pain in the ass to play through.

Im not sure what I think about this. Ill have to think more.

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Original post by Athos Its my dream my fantasy to make an RPG game were you actually benefit from playing choosen role. Thats partly why i have major intrest in AI too. The problem: How do you make an game were you reward and evolv the player charcters by rolplaying. How do you keep them intrested and make them want more? i have 2 ideas to this problem but i manly want to start discussion on how you could make a system that would work. My idea 1: Have a very advanced NPC / AI system were the npc of the world rewards the player for his curage / bravory. My idea 2: Have GMs monotoring the world and reward players for what thay do(in an online mmo senario ) Anyone else have better ideas and willing to discuss? Is the old muds the only way you can actually get people to roleplay? Greetings Athos

You know what, Lionheads "The Movies" will feature players actually speaking in to the mic and writing their own movies... so in a sense the are roleplaying for real (becomming the actors and script writers).

Heh lionhead studios is what i think the cutting edge within the world of more advanced and more exprimental typs of gameplay. And i like them =)

Havnt looked into the movies so much but it seems intresting. But not the type of game i would like toplay.



Anonymous,
The GM approche could never work as you said but its a way to solve the RP issue. And i dont want or intend to be the RP Nazi that mu.ranter talks about.
You seem very insightful about thise issues. May i ask about your background? what you base all your good arguments about?

Character advancment.
Is there a good way to let the human evolve instead of the character?I mean the actually player behind the character. So oneself could grow with ones characters. And the gameplay is about to lern who you are what powers you have and so on.

-Athos