Coming up with new ideas may well be easy, but to get new ideas that work and revolutionie gaming are not.

Well, that seems to be what this forum is all about, isn't it? I consider it market research. :)

::Random post::

Why not just make THE WORLD? Just kidding.

1.) The ultimate MMORPG needs to learn a few things from reality. In reality, there are six and a half billion people on earth. The vast majority of them all think that they are special. Why? People think that they are special for a number of reasons - mainly because they don't live life from the perspective of others, but also because the real world is diverse enough to allow every individual person to be different from the next guy. MMORPG's can do this too. Everything is content based, however. Every animation is scripted, every model is premade. PROCERDURAL PROGRAMMING! HELLO! Add a dynamic randomness to the game world. Procedural gameplay is to MMORPG gameplay as ragdoll physics is to death animations on the PSone. If you have a gradient of possibilities, you have infintely more area for individuality. You can't be individual with the relatively limited pallet of customization offered by current MMORPGs. In Diablo II, in fact, you could be more individual (as far as actual armament is concerned. Everyone pretty much looks the same once you get to Hell Baal runs...) Randomly generated rare items and a 20 point skill system allowed you to have some differences as to your skills. However, this is still too random and still too basic. You don't want randomness, you want procedure. Procedure is logical and diverse. Randomness is random and diverse. The former wins.

2.) There are millions of people playing Halo 2 online. You are ranked according to your skill. In an MMORPG world, you are ranked according to your ability to create a cookie-cutter character build. The MMO doesn't contradict the RPG. It's just that all MMORPG's are done to a piss poor level. Graphics aren't really getting better. Nothing's getting better - save for the profit margians. Halo 2 has skill based gameplay. MMO's have nothing based gameplay - there isn't enough room for character optimization for your skill at creating a unique character to come into play, and there is no skill in gameplay and no tactics are involved. You sit. You wait. You press hotkeys. Depending on how the hits are rolled, you loose or you win. Depeding on how well you farmed UBRS last night, you may have better armor or weapons. Depending on how well you searched Allakhazam, you may or may not have picked one of the best character builds.

Which is dumb.

No real combat skill involved x No real combat tactics involved x Purely profit driven system (All money, no fun. Wait...isn't that false advertising? Games are marketed for fun...but then they are actually boring. I want a refund) x Idiotic public that saps up these piss-poor games x Unimaginative skill system = Derivative, boring, stupid gameplay and a poor product overall.

The real problem, however, is the fact that it's all driven by money. Money money money. Naturally, that's the drive for any sort of business, but MMORPG's tend to be driven by the money to the end that there isn't much left of the game other than a way to keep people playing for more months to increase the profits.

My first reaction when I realized this was "OMFG GAY."

So, until people start getting tired of MMO's, we will be bombarded with crap. Insufferable crap.

Unless someone does something about it. Of course, it takes lots of resources that no one has to set up an MMORPG, but a less massive game would be an interesting idea.

Oh, and one more thing:

Quote:

I think you missed my point here. Pretty much anyone can learn the methods of an MMORPG because the games deliberately give you a wider scope and slower pace. The emphasis on character skill vs. player skill means that socialisers can develop by being part of a group or guild, playing a healer and requiring little to no reflexes to advanec. Or they can take up crafting skills and never fight a goblin in their life. A first person shooter, by its nature, doesn't really allow for this - instead, you have the quick and the dead. Oh, and the campers, but then they tend to get hounded off most games. Also, problems of network latency are massively exacerbated when reflexes are important (ie. FPS games) and massively reduced when the character can effectively fight on auto-pilot (ie. RPG games) - another reason why the latter have come to be more popular online. Tolaris has touched on this already, and in answer to your last question, bandwidth isn't the problem, latency is, so not needing to send statistics back and forth is not much of a gain.

What exactly is character skill? Your ability to choose between a few set items and skills? There is no skill involved increating MMORPG characters. It's not even intuitive. Casual gamers may feel free to play around, but it's really just crap.

Furthermore, it's foolish to say FPS's don't allow for the same things as MMORPG's. FPS means that you're looking through a first person perspective and shooting at things. You can have an MMORPG FPS, quite easily. The fact that no one has created a decent MMORPG FPS doesn't meant that it's impossible.

Also, MMORPG's aren't as diverse in the paths you can choose as you seem to indicate. They're all focused on combat, in some way or form. You can't just become a crafter and mingle amongst society - you're supposed to be hero, in some way, shape or form. This means that you do have to fight goblins. Or, at best, you can craft weapons for others to use to kill goblins. What fun is that? The crafting systems are just as unimaginative as the gameplay.

Speaking of the gameplay, the only reason that MMORPG's offer non-skill based gameplay (Syn:Boring) is due to latency concerns. This isn't a very good reason. In fact, I find it more annoying to be killed because the server rolled my chance to hit low than to be killed by profuse amounts of latency. Well...not true. I find them equally irritating. If they have to offer watered down gameplay, then I don't think they should put games together at all.

Now, some people may enjoy this gameplay. This is irrelevant. The majority of people once agreed with slavery. Does that make slavery good too? No, not at all. Many people buy into MMORPG's - this means that they are a great business medium - not that they are great from a gameplay standpoint. People would drop them in a second if something more appealing came along. Notice I said more appealing - not better. The fact of the matter is that MMORPG's are unimaginative and poor. The fact of the matter is that people don't have an alternative, so they settle for the status quo, although many may like it. But, that doesn't make it good. That just means that they don't know any better.

Luckily, in the game design world, there are those who try to milk the status quo for all they get - and there are those who make their money by putting the former out of business by pushing the envolope. I'd prefer to be the last guys.

[Edited by - Nytehauq on June 22, 2005 1:54:57 PM]

Circumstantial Perma Death.

Not really, I think your right, that MMORPG's are lacking a certain elemnts of skill, and there a question I asked at the beginning of the topic which was , Can MMORPG's have real time combat, if games like swords etc.

Although some MMORPG's are becoming more skillful. Games like GW make you have only 8 skills during P vs P, they want you to use strats to overcome your enemy. The problem is this still is making to much skill. I think MMORPG's really do need to start focusing on making them more about skill. Afterall, anyone can grind all day, but if you look at RTS players, they learn alot, and learn strats, and even when they think they have a reliable strats they may still face problems, and must think how to overcome them, I believe the RTS player is one of the most intelligent 'breed' of gamer. The problem is trying to incorparte more skill, but also they need to be fun, no one likes to get beat over and over, so skill and RPG elements like power stats, health stats, magic spells, sword techniques and equipment really need to combine.

Quote:

Original post by Nytehauq 2.) There are millions of people playing Halo 2 online. You are ranked according to your skill. In an MMORPG world, you are ranked according to your ability to create a cookie-cutter character build. (..) No real combat skill involved x No real combat tactics involved (..) What exactly is character skill? Your ability to choose between a few set items and skills? There is no skill involved increating MMORPG characters. It's not even intuitive. Casual gamers may feel free to play around, but it's really just crap.

There are millions of people playing card games (magic: the gathering, yu-gi-oh and whatnot) The gameplay of card games is to large degree MMO gameplay in slow motion: you pick a set of skills. You face another guy with their own set of skills. You both in turns select which combination of skills to use, in order to defeat the other person. Heck, there's even random element involved since you aren't guaranteed to get to use all the skills/cards you picked.

Does it mean these people all play game where there's no tactics, and they all get ranked *not* according to their skills... because the element of pressing the fire button quick enough never enters the picture? Does it make the skills which led them on top of the ranking ladder of M:tG less "important" than skills which led the top Halo players to where they are?

If you accept there's more than one type of "skill" in gameplay, you'll have to accept there can be skill to MMO gameplay as well. It's just different from skills needed to do well in Halo.

Hmmmm.... is this where I explain our MMO project?

How it will be FPS + RTS + RPG in one juicy bundle?

How it will have mini-games like moddable vehicles, melee fighting like DefJam Vendetta, Gambling, and a Hacking simulator?

The special GM GUIs we are coding so GMs can play mobs for more realism?

Or how we want to bring the interactivity of SP games to MMOs through environmental puzzles, stealth gameplay, involved mysteries uncovering the backstory of the world, and bringing UT game modes to a persistant world?




...nah that would be too much self-promotion and people would tell me it wont ever get made :)

I suddenly realized that no one has actually mentioned Uru.

Now, when we think about MMO games, most people think of something rather competetive and violent, but Uru, stemming from the Myst franchise takes a completely different approach. I've never really played it before, but they push the total community aspect of it. Its really just about solving puzzles and exploring the worlds with a friend. Their other selling point seems to be that the character modelling system is so accurate that you can pretty much put your real life face onto your virtual character. There was also something in there about creating custom dimensions, but I don't remember off the top of my head.

So, I guess it really wouldn't be spicing up an MMORPG, but it would be nice to add an option into MMORPGs where you can play as say an explorer, rather than adventurer. So, you travel around the world looking for treassure and mapping out new areas while not being engaged or needing to engage in combat of any sort. Might actually be an interesting level-less job class that people can choose to have. So, explorers can carry out like scouting missions, mapping missions, object retrieval or just plain commerce based things. Of course, explorers can't be attacked or attack anything or anyone.

Quote:

Original post by Vanquish environmental puzzles, stealth gameplay, involved mysteries uncovering the backstory of the world, ...

Thats exactly what I was talking about. My wife has played mystery games (Nancy Drew, Sanitarium, DarkFall, Myst) for decades now and we were discussion how to get her to play an MMORPG.

When I saw in action the types of detailed interactions that SP mystery / puzzle games have, how engaging they can be, and the fun I was missing...I realized MMOs are missing that too!

I mean these games have radios with dials, boiler room gadgets...the list goes on and on. But MMOs fail to make their environemtns immersive.

Games like Prince of Persia and Tomb Raider turn the zone itself into a puzzle. Again, MMOs dont do that.

So...I agree with your concurrance with my post :)

No please Vanquish, I've never heard of your MMO project. I'm very curios of how FPS and RTS can be combined alone, without combining ROG aswell.