Its fun to see that when everyone talks about MMORPGs, they always mention Guild Wars or World of Warcraft somewhere along the lines, especially when they're talking about story in MMORPGs. What I don't get is why no one ever talks about Final Fantasy XI? Is it that no one here plays that?

The Final Fantasy Series live on their stories, be it good or bad depending on your perception, and when XI went online, people were skeptical about its story element, since like mentioned before, stories in MMORPGs are not easily implemented. But personally, I still feel they pulled it off well with 3 seperate story lines to begin with depending on which nation you start from, then there's the 2 expansions that have stories that continue from the original.

What's the down side of FFXI's implementation of the story? Well, it actually "forces" people to work together to be able to see the next part of the story, which some may feel is just too much of a hassle. Boss fights requiring up to 18 players, ones that limit you to a party of 6, yet require alot of strategizing, long tedious levels where hacking your way is not an option, etc. Sometimes coordinating these missions take hours, so imagine trying to find people to help. Grind is also required to get you prepared for these missions, which may be good or bad. But in the end, it all boils down to the fact that it just feels like a Final Fantasy game.

Ok, that's my gripe about not seeing anyone almost ever mentioning FFXI when talking about stories in MMORPGs.

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As for potential freedom in MMORPGs to create your own story, it seems Second Life may be an interesting game to look at. Well, in some aspects its not a game. Its more like a literal virtual world where you get to control and create any aspect of it you can imagine.

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I used the Matrix as an example for sarcasm. It's the only type of story in which jacking out fits. This single situation prevents MMOs from becoming true RPGs. You'll never have a serious world when players are vanishing and appearing when they please.

Of course the Matrix is one example. But say a character goes to sleep in an inn, or in his house - leaving his friends to occupy themselves while he is sleeping.

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Sure, that's why there are so many emmersive MMORPGs out there. Seriously, creating an interactive simulation world at that level is not an easy task. The play testing alone would take years.

That is just negative thinking. Just because there isn't one out there (not true by the way, check out ATID) doesn't mean they cannot exist without trouble. The problem is that most players want to fight. Developers confuse "fight" with "grind" and choose not to do something innovative as it ha sa risk and instead go for a scenario that has been made popular by Everquest or Ultima.

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Many Dungeons and Dragons campaigns have no real ongoing storylines, merely Freelancing quests that they do to advance levels. And as they do this the characters develop, and the players roleplay.

Game/Dungeon masters are becoming more and more common in MMORPGs, since Neverwinter Nights showed us the possiblity to have Game Masters influence the game world. This system worked great there and several new titles are including this feature, yet without any apparent help to roleplay.

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Epic stories help, by dynamic stories are more important in my opinion. Where the player can actually interact and influence the story. That is the way to have stories in a persistant world.

That is the key, amking the players themselves the story. Make ever relationship dynamic and changable and then you have a dynamic world. Add to this dynamic economy, spawn points for monsters and basically anything esle that can be dynamic and you have youself a dyanmic game world. Nothing in the real world is static, so why should things in a persistant online world ne static too?

MMO games can be roleplayed, its just that most of are not. People have to learn that roleplay m,eans more than a character advancement system and actually figure out ways to make MMOH&S games RPGs.

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Original post by methulah That is just negative thinking. Just because there isn't one out there (not true by the way, check out ATID) doesn't mean they cannot exist without trouble.

There's nothing wrong with having a ton of confidence. But it's usually wise to consider the fact that if no one has done it yet, there is likely trouble envolved.

Consider what all should exist in a game world to allow players to create their own story. Just a static landscape? Can they build structures? Build weapons? Space ships? Do they fight over territory and resources? What would players do to other players who kill friendlies? How could they identify them? If the game has no hard-coded laws, players would need to be capable of puting up wanted posters! This is like one small annoyance in a situation where you'll have thousands of small annoyances. Limiting what the players can do forces the game world to step up and give the players some kind of crutch to lean on.

of course a gam world has "hard coded" laws. Laws exist in every campaign setting (anarchy online??), and must exist to promote peace. But it shouldn't be that players have to obey those laws, it should be that players will recieve consiquences for not obeying them.

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Original post by methulahIt is (in my, and several other, opinions) more fun to immerse yourself into a character and a game world than to hit the "auto attack" button and wait for all day. Roleplaying lets us be smeone who we can't be, who we (in many cases) secretly want to be.

In an MMORPG, how exactly is this achieved? What counts as immersion? Roleplay how? In order to keep the player interest, it is almost inevitable that they will end up a) solving puzzles and/or b) killing things. We don't have the natural language capabilities yet to allow you to chat with NPCs about any old thing, and that wouldn't be a game in any event. At the moment, game designers are trying to get immersion in the only technologically feasible way they know, through the graphics. No matter what you may say, unless people come up with whole new programming and technological approaches, "immersion" will be little more than pick-your-own-adventure (as in the books of that type). The repetitive actions in most MMORPGs are designed with an appeal to the on-line gambler in mind. And it works, but not for everyone. A non-linear MMORPG that allows you to really TAKE PART in your world and be immersed in it is currently beyond the ability of the entertainment companies making games because they simply don't know how to do it. And if someone gets a clever idea but that idea is going to cost 100 million dollars and 10 years to make, no one is going to do it. It's just a fact. The tools aren't available yet. So, while people may decry the state of MMORPGs today, they need to understand that it's not a lack of creativity or desire that is stopping their dream game from being made, but rather, an inability to see a reasonable path as to how it is supposed to happen and remain an MMORPG. If you have 100 people in a game, all interacting, how do all those people get to roleplay and what is it exactly they DO while they are "roleplaying"?

People will never get roleplaying in the traditional manner that they want. People want to do the faithful knight bit (for example) but it's not doable for MMORPGs, IMO, without being fake and stilted. Why? Because there will always be rebels not wanting to do it and ruining the immersion for everyone else and the game will by definition (for a massmarket mass player base on-line game) be tightly scripted. In a tabletop game like Dungeons and Dragons, you have a human dungeon master able to do the one thing a game can never do, react with creativity to creative players. A game master in a table top game can do things on the fly. This flexibility is PRECISELY what is required for immersion. And mass market games simply cannot do this. Further, because the game master for the table top game only has at most 8 players in his world to deal with, his variables and the "need to please" are much lower than a game with hundereds of people. Perhaps eventually we will have artificial intelligence advanced enough to generate outcomes and respond to unscripted events on the fly. But we are a LONG way off.

Here's a general question. What would constitute immersion? Don't mention graphics or anything else that is relatively easy to do. From your perspective within the game, what is immersed. Be specific. What is the list the game PROGRAMMERS as well as designers can look at for guidelines.

[Edited by - Ned_K on August 23, 2005 1:02:27 AM]

Part of roleplaying is the fact that you get to roleplay that character. The character you want to be. I'm not dissing your idea - but it just sounds like people would end up serving beers to people who have been out burininating, when they want to go out burininating.

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We don't have the natural language capabilities yet to allow you to chat with NPCs about any old thing, and that wouldn't be a game in any event.

Are you missin the whole point? That is why we are talking about MMO games. Because they have so, so much more potential. You can talk to another player about anything you want, while sitting in a bar. That is why MMORPGshave more potential for roleplay and immersion than regular RPGs and that is why I want to know why we arn't seeing it.

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Original post by methulah Are you missin the whole point? That is why we are talking about MMO games. Because they have so, so much more potential. You can talk to another player about anything you want, while sitting in a bar. That is why MMORPGshave more potential for roleplay and immersion than regular RPGs and that is why I want to know why we arn't seeing it.

Is that what you've meant all along? Simply talking to other players? I realize role playing could take place this way, but it usually doesn't. Most players, when talking to each other, rarely stay in character. They talk as though they're controlling a fake person in a game world about to slay some AI monsters. Most of them are probably around the age of 13 to 16, and probably do not yet have the capability of letting their mind run that far.

Scripted AI characters are the opposite in this respect. The stay completely in character within every twist of the action. The player can literally lose themself in this type of game - the first time through at least. Have you ever played a game that pulled you in so far that it took pain of hunger to snap you back to reality? Ahh, I remember those days. That's something I'll personally never experience with a MMO. In fact, from the looks of things, games may keep going in an opposite direction from here. More of everything but atmosphere.

I have read enough of this post to understand at least a little bit of it. So now I can honestly criticize what has been said...

You people (bring on the racism?) are all pissing and moaning about there not being any "role-playing" in a mmorpg. Well duh. Personally, the whole thought of joining the nearest war reinactment so I can sit around all day and talk as if it were really going on, doesnt really appeal to me. The same is true in a mmorpg, a rpg even, for that matter. There will never be a true mmorpg because you will never get that many die-hard fans to enter the same servers that will do nothing but talk in the games dialect or act the same way they would if they were born into the games time era. The only reason this idea even semi works in a rpg, is that players are given set options when speaking with npcs and they are forced in a very linear fashion on where to go, what to do, and how to do it. Granted, some more than others. The best you can do is try and plan for the players actions and attempt to control the reaction to those actions. That itself is next to impossible. Just think before you criticize the big games that have thousands of players playing on them at all times. Yes they have their bugs and their flaws but people still pay a monthy charge to play the games they enjoy playing. If you dont like it, make your own.

~munKiecs

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Original post by methulah Part of roleplaying is the fact that you get to roleplay that character. The character you want to be. I'm not dissing your idea - but it just sounds like people would end up serving beers to people who have been out burininating, when they want to go out burininating. Quote: We don't have the natural language capabilities yet to allow you to chat with NPCs about any old thing, and that wouldn't be a game in any event. Are you missin the whole point? That is why we are talking about MMO games. Because they have so, so much more potential. You can talk to another player about anything you want, while sitting in a bar. That is why MMORPGshave more potential for roleplay and immersion than regular RPGs and that is why I want to know why we arn't seeing it.

Actually it would seem YOU missed MY point since you cherry picked one sentence and responded to it out of context. I brought up several key points, none of which you responded to.

The funny thing is, you said in the bit I just quoted from you here: "Part of roleplaying is the fact that you get to roleplay that character." and I directly addressed why the chief problem in trying to implement your desire is technological. Unless you are going to hire 10,000 actors to reside on all your game servers, how do you maintain the immersion? If you can write AI smart enough to respond on the fly in such a way that realistic "role-playing" is possible in an MMO, then I suggest you get rich and famous fast, because so far you're the only one.

Finally, you didn't respond to the point raised by myself and several other people, namely, it's an MMO. You can only roleplay if the 100 other random people on your server choose to roleplay as well. Ain't gonna happen. People won't pretend the on-line world is real no matter how much you want them to. And it only takes one person to buzz wreck your whole "immersive experience".

Chasing immersion and role-playing potential in single player is doable because the designers and programmers build the whole world around one person. Trying to do it in an MMO, is, in my opinion, a pipe dream because you are dependent on the other PLAYERS sharing your same desire to pretend this cyber reality is actually REAL. And they simply will not do that.

This shouldn't be a debate. MMO games have more potnetial (potentials, not practicality) to have an immersicve world where everyone responds to dialogue correctly.

Now, let us take an another truth. Roelplaying happens in PnP games such as D&D. In those games, people don't roleplay by sitting around all day, talking to the barman, they use the barman as a vending machine, abliet sometimes with a personality.

The roleplaying usually comes in the combat, where quests are taken, not because it brings better XP, but because the world, and of course the people they have met along the way expect them to. It might not be saving the world, but doing something for someone.

That is why immersion into the world is important. Because you need to have it so that the player feel that the person who gave them the quest actually wants them to do it. And they will only believe that is the believe in the world they are playing in.

Roelplaying doesn't mean talking all day to a barman, I myswlf would rather go down to the pub and do that in real life. Roleplaying is about beliebving in the game world and playing the character as it should be played.

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Actually it would seem YOU missed MY point since you cherry picked one sentence and responded to it out of context. I brought up several key points, none of which you responded to.

Sorry, I missed your point. After reading over your post again, I did make a mistake, I was tired and was running out of patience with this whole thread, so I posted hastily.