On the subject of indicators, the screen doesn't have to shake and the player doesn't have to puke from motion sickness. The game can just give the feedback "this lock is too hard to pick" and there are still no numbers involved.

As always, the MMORPG design discussion is quite exciting :D

I don't entirely agree with Mu either. Yes, I agree there is a problem with number crunching and that it is strongly associated with the leveling treadmill / heart of all evil. I definitely agree that this hurts roleplaying deeply. However, I don't think a no-numbers system is the solution. If anything, I think you need MORE numbers.

Like our anonymous poster here said, numbers in games are representations of reality. The problem with a lot of current generation MMORPGs is that the numbers simply cannot represent what the developers intended them to. It is incredibly hard to balance character systems, and when you add the social factor it becomes close to impossible.

As everyone knows, MMORPG character systems are the legacy of the pencil & paper D&D style of RPGs. Everyone also knows that those systems were designed to be complimentary to a Dungeon Master's guiding hand. What the DM provided was a meaningful response to a player's actions, and that is what is lacking in most MMORPGs.

Effectively, quests and story have become just another channel for character development. Aside from PvP oriented features (which generally cannot be RPed that much), rarely do you see quests and events that are there for RP purposes only. Think about it, in the BG series you take quests to experience the story, you make decisions to define who you are (the entire point of the setting). Now, when was the last time you did a quest in an MMORPG that had NO reward. In MMORPGs you do a quest to get the reward, you don't do a quest for the sake of the quest itself.

This is a problem inherent in the MMORPG archictecture. MMORPGs succeed because of the character development aspect, not the story aspect. But RPing inherently means an emphasis on story first.

It is IMPOSSIBLE to put a dynamic story into an MMORPG with writers. It is impossible to please thousands of players over years by having one GM for every 50 players continuously doing quests. Not only would it be impossible financially, the creativity would eventually run out. The only solution is to make the content dynamic. If you think about what makes stories dynamic, it's the people, and there is no way to simulate that. To truly put the focus on story, you have to hand the reins over to the player.

And that is really scary.

PinFX - What we have been disscusing the entire time has been of making a dynamic system where NPC motvies and Smart blocks build a believable role. While your post is valid, you describe the current system, not the system which designers must aspire to reach. I believe that these new ideas would enhance a mmorpg world greatly.

As for your post, I believe in dulling down the system. I believe that strength 5 should be replaced with a label that calls you Weak, and strength 50 gives you a label that says your Strong. This is still a level, but it plays more into the roleplay aspects - look I am a Strong Warrior, or a Genius Wizard, which is better than Look Im a level 100 strength Warrior or look I am a level 80 wizard. This small detail would enhance the roleplay aspects without sweeping the system.

Talonder, I agree, City of Heroes uses a system like that. In fact a lot of MMORPGs use a color-coded system that does what you are talking about. The numbers are still there, but the player doesn't always need to know them.

As for systems that designers must aspire to reach, like a lot of other people I've taken a shot at it. And like a lot of other people I think I have a solution. But I think the argument I made is still being argued by other people, and I think we need to convert as many people as possible...

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Original post by Anonymous Poster A rating system : that as GMs play they get 'experience' and are allowed to design/run larger/more intricate 'modules'. Player feedback would be used to thin out the 'bad' GMs (or restrict them to running their ability level)...

That sounds a little bit risky to me - giving the players an element of control over the DMs opens up a serious danger of munchkinism taking over the server, and generally defeating the purpose of DM driven games.

DMs that give out lots of XP and other rewards are more likely to get higher ratings than others. DMs that punish lots of players run the risk of getting rated lower. Griefer teams could start rate-down campaigns against particularly vigilant DMs in order to open up the server to attack. All in all, it opens up a great deal of potential for players to undermine the effectiveness of the DMs.

That said, the idea of different 'levels' of DM is not a bad one - I'm just not sure it should be in the hands of the players - at least, not unless you want the gameplay to be determined by the lowest common denominator.

Of course the other option, assuming you are a funded project would be to HIRE people to play these characters.

In our project the coders are developing two interfaces for DMs:
a) an interface for jumping into any NPC and playing them as a player character
b) an interface for controlling mobs with an RTS like interface so that they can effiently command groups of mobs to attack players.

In our case, my online guild of 4 years will be doing the DMing, so I trust them implicitly.

Of course then the question becomes how many would you need on a server of say 4000 people? Since MMOs arent doing this at all right now, even 1 would be better than the status quo. Obviously the more the better, but Im thinking if you had 10 people per server commanding groups of mobs it would make the whole experience better.

If you paid someone to do this 24 hours a day8$ x 24 hrs x 31 days x 10 people = 60,000 a month. If you charge 15$ a month for your MMO, 60,000 / 15$ = 4000 players...just to break even on the GMing cost.

This is why a self-generating system is so important.

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Perhaps Voice to Text features can help alot for the verbal aspect (for both DM and players), but the object placement mechanisms will still be fairly crude and require alot of skill to stage situations well.

I like this feature a ton, however, it never does sound right. Has anyone found a voice to text feature that sounds smooth?

I had an idea for an MMO speach to text to speech system.

At first this sounds weird, but if you wanted to roleplay different characters you could add voice module packs to make a man sound like a girl and vice versa.

I thought about this when I heard that the Unreal3 engine has a text to voice sytem. So naturally if you take Dragon Naturally Speaking (voice to text) added to Unreal 3 (text to voice) ...youd have a way to roleplay a man if you are a girl or vice versa.

Of course geeks around the world would be cybering each other with it...but ok :P

Pardon me for stepping down my foot hard, as always, but I just can't resist...

Are we still discussing the possibility of having an evolving storyline? For THIS mainly needs a bunch of writers and a bigger bunch of coders, even if they have to code fast. Have you taken a look at MxO lately? They DO have live events about every two weeks, which outcomes orient the way the world will be handled and evolve. I think this is a big step towards what we have been imagining here. Not sufficient yet, but close. This might be because there is only ONE writer, and it was a famous one to start with. Numbers are against them. They sacrificed quantity to supposed quality. For the same amount of money, they could have had two or three other less professional writers, potentially professional GMs, handing them quests by the dozen, to be implemented in the game. But THIS would have required thrice as much coders as previously. Not a bad choice, economy-wise.

But if we are discussing how to create emergent gameplay, then allow me to have my go.

I am still toying around with the possibility to replace a part of the NPCs by PCs. People are playing text-based and browser-based games all over the world. They are PEOPLE, but most importantly, they are PLAYERS. By linking the databases of a browser-based game (or maybe more, if you get lucky and hard on it) and of a MMORPG with 3D graphics, you get a chance of creating emergent gameplay, provided you give the games a common background with a common set of laws, but with different gamestyles and different game GOALS.

Check www.myefarm.com it's in French, though.

This is a game about being a FARMER!! not exactly what your basic MMORPG player is dreaming about. But people (including me) are prepared to play this one just for fun, and because it only requires your attention for about 15 minutes a day to be fun, but demands for 8 hours of presence to be highly competitive and reach top scores. Simply through the rules.

If you use that playerbase to create your NPCs, you don't have NPCs anymore, and find yourself with emergent gameplay, or at least, I think so.

Imagine a game feature, in another efarming game, where you actualy play a medieval fantasy farmer general, who has to constantly deal with the aleas of the kingdom he settled in. Imagine that every other day, you have to modify your way of doing things because you sufer the odd invasion of wild boars, or a party of goblins comes and is burning your fields, which were only three days away from reaping. In most games, this is only an ingame feature, which lets you know that you have artificially lost a random part of your gains. If it was linked to the MMORPG, you wold have benefits for both types of game, since the farmer would have the possibility to set a bounty on the intruders IN THE MMORPG, so that the MMORPGers have something unique to do, approximately any time, and the browser-based game players have a different oportunity to get rid of the nuisances.

But this is not only valid with the efarming. There are many games of commerce, where you are trying to get your small shop to make it big in the industry field. You can also imagine Flash games in a browser-based game for crafters, who will create goods from loot sold by MMORPG players, that will be sold by Commercial Browser-based game players to MMORPG players. They will eat food created by the efarmers and sold by the commercials.

I think this leads to a virtual complex community, each part of it having its own rules.

Granted, guards don't fit in this Player Character Non Acting Character scheme. Or do they?
Once again, imagine a feature which would allow to have a magical video recorder in your browser-based shopkeeper game. Imagine that it provides you with the face and name of any thief that happened to come through your door. Imagine having the possibility to set a bounty on him. Would this make of the MMORPG PCs guards?

And you can add many more browser-based games ideas, like Generals, deciding what kind of military moves the MMORPG PCs should make to gain their cities or Kingdom an advantage. Try imagining what would DAoC RvR feel like if THIS was added to it? If Estok's implementation of Warfare (try to find the thread) had any influence over the content of the world, or even in the way it was perceived by the players of ALL the network of games?



If you have read this far, then you are very courageous and have to be thanked for your patience. I know this is only a quick rough of what is a potential good idea, but has to be refined. And YES, I AM aware of the amount of coding and balancing issues it would require. But I am also aware that in a meta-game of this kind, you are in fact appealing to MOST OF ALL the players' communities on the net, and allow them to modify a non-set world to suit their taste. from now on, the MMORPG PCs are not only present on their world, but also have a responsibility towards the PCNACs for protecting their goods, because they will make their society and weaponry evolve. They are stil allowed to go and rabbit-hunt all their leisure. But while they are bludgeoning to death a fox to get its pelt, somewhere, a bunch of rats is eating someone's grain, a lone rabbied wolf is closing on the city, and a group of goblins is raiding a farm. The longer you delay the resolution of these problems, the more trouble you set on your city, for just ONE FOx PELT, and you will still need nineteen others to make a cool looking cape. Oh, well..

If we were discussing the benefits from acting like your character is supposed to act, which is as close to RolePlaying as you can get without flooding the chat panel with thees and thous to get in the mood, then I think Morrowind did a decent job of it. But once again, it didn't go far enough.

Having different responses depending on your level of fame was a good idea, and was well implemented. But I would like to see more. I would like to see a possibility to end a mission with different levels of achievement and failures. Imagine you are asked or proposed to guard a caravan going from one city to another, but a bunch of travelers are sitting in a coach, just for the security of traveling in groups. An attack surprises you, and before you can react, damage is done to a cart. You kill your opponent, but too late, one of the travelers has been mortally wounded. Your mission was to safeguard the merchant to the otehr city. But you lost a part of merchant's goods, and one NPC died. You still should get a reward, but should also be less welcome next time, since you lost the merchant some money. And the NPC family will probably not be very happy with you. After all, one of them died under your guard. Even if her three elder brothers were with the deceased maiden when it happened, YOU, the MMORPG PC were the one in charge of security. The three brothers arrived safely, but not the maid. Less recognition. You should loose something. It could be fame, it could be a commercial advantage in this city. It could be anything.

But that does not only work if you decide to play the good paladin.

Imagine playing the thief. Once you are researched, there aren't many places in which you cna hide. There should be a part of the city, a slum, in which thieves gather, a sort of maze of streets and alleys, in which there is no other law than that of the master thief. Free PvP in there, no matter what your realm is. Enter at your own risks, blah blah blah. You still can go anywhere you like. But being a thief owns you some bounties, and you are not able to go in the city to regular shops either. You have to sneak in them and steal. Or you can always go to slum city shops, where you are allowed to buy, but where prices are thrice as high as anywhere else.

Imagine playing a Dark Paladin. You are supposed to propose a NPC sacrifice to your god each 8 hours of play or so. Every NPC or PCNAC fears you. They will serve you with the minimum fuss and ask you as politely as possible to leave. You are a voluntary outcast.

Imagine playing a Mage. You will probably go in any shop you like, maybe even in slum city, to get whatever element you lack for a potion. And it is okayish for a Mage to talk to anyone they like. But being seen talking to an aknowledged thief makes his reputation go down, and the prices he will have to pay in shops next time will go up. Until they learn mind manipulation and Jedi Pass.

Imagine playing a Holy Paladin. Imagine having your Holy Powers depending on faith, but at the condition that at regular hours of ingame time, you take the time to pray facing whatever you choose, the sun, the local Mecqa, anything. Imagine having to sidetrack from your original goal in order to right a wrong you have witnessed, for if you don't, you LOOSE your powers?

Imagine playing a Dark Lord, and investing a local cave or tower, to settle with your bucnh of pets. Imagine having to send them on errands, RTS style, in order to be able to have another kind of Dungeon-Master style game? Imagine opposing your dungeon to the other players? Would this be a nice addition as endgame?

You can imagine? GOOOD!! this means you can roleplay. Now get out and DO IT!!!!!

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Its especially hard because its not just individual actions, but sequences of actions with relevance to the current situation and future potentials (ie- Paladin has 2 people to save and cant do both and a stupid system would automaticly call it a failure because someone in his sight wasnt saved...)

But isn't that EXACTLY the kind of failure a paladin would keep reproaching himself? He tried to save two people and only saved one? This is NOT a success in his own opinion, but an utter failure!! Whereas in the same situation, a rogue would be perfectly happy to have saved ONE person, because it means he saved AT LEAST one of them!! But because Paladins and Rogues have different moral values, and should therefore have different rewards for doing the same things. This is why having composite teams is so interesting.