I also hear plans for a Harvest Moon MMORPG :)
Supposedly, It wont have Combat at all :)

http://www.harvestmoononline.com/

So this can also mean that if people don't want grinding and more co-operation + role playing they should remove the combat out of the game or put it in a very limited way, but since alot of MMORPGs just put Monsters in a field respawning endlessly, it means that they put it there intentionally... Because MMORPG designers are bad, apparently :P

Combat is fun though. There is something about having a party of adventurers who you can trust and going up and pitting yourself against the forces of evil :).

I think that spawn points should be dynamic and races should able to be extinctified though.

I think mmorpgs should be played out in sessions. Something where every 6 months everything is wiped. This way things can lead to a climax... the dark forces are rising? Every player could somehow prepare for the onslaught by having their own function. This would somehow reduce the amount of battling during the game where people could role play together preparing for this final battle and then BAM it's on!

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Original post by sanch3x I think mmorpgs should be played out in sessions. Something where every 6 months everything is wiped. This way things can lead to a climax... the dark forces are rising? Every player could somehow prepare for the onslaught by having their own function. This would somehow reduce the amount of battling during the game where people could role play together preparing for this final battle and then BAM it's on!

I seem to recall saying how this would not work like 30mins ago, read above.
Although I wish it could.

I’ll go on then, I’ve thought about this problem though… Lets say the evil wins and takes over the land and enslaves the population of players, until such time as they can rebuild, form a resistance, take over again and so on..

How are would you run all the computer generated characters that take over, some kick ass AI running on the game server controlling say 1000+ characters? I’m not sure how that can be made to work and be interesting.

Unless the invading force was made up of players, who started the game joining the Evil forces.

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Original post by bobason456 Quote: Original post by sanch3x I think mmorpgs should be played out in sessions. Something where every 6 months everything is wiped. This way things can lead to a climax... the dark forces are rising? Every player could somehow prepare for the onslaught by having their own function. This would somehow reduce the amount of battling during the game where people could role play together preparing for this final battle and then BAM it's on! I seem to recall saying how this would not work like 30mins ago, read above. Although I wish it could.

It's a matter of opinion and it's not quite what you mentioned. You think the developper's would go "Oh look evil has taken over and all PCs are dead, lets shut down the project!" That's the whole idea of playing sessions that last X amount of time, you restart.

However, having different option available to you depending on how the last session ended isn't a bad idea.

I was just wondering how many people, who had spent a month or so playing / developing a character, would return if they and all their friends got killed.. And the game started over again, even with a new story line. I think there should be some connection between these big game changing Events, like reincarnation where you can bring over your mana or what ever.

Well the change wouldn't be a surprised, people who would sign up would know that their characters would get wiped after a while. And I'm sure they'd make the level cap easy enough to attain so someone joining late in the season wouldn't be left out of the final battle (Guild Wars style!).

However a transition of an old character to the new season wouldn't be such a bad idea. Maybe not a complete transfer but to say you have Lord Jujube's blood in your veins then you'd get bonuses depending on your "bloodline's" behaviour in the previous session.

So basically people could brag about stuff like "Hey noob, I'm a 10th generation hero! See you on the front lines." People could constantly try to out do their previous performance. Heck there could even be legends about them if they scored high enough :)

This actually sounds kind of cool :p

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Original post by methulah Quote: Quote: What has more role-playing than MMORPGs? Why? Almost anything that is single player. Because they're single player, the world revolves around that individual. Unless MMORPG players start taking turns to be the hero, the same type of experience is not going to be there. No, that isn't the reason. Importance is perspective and that strian of though it detrimental to roleplaying iteself. In a single player game, there still is someone more powerful than the player - and you can be sure that from their perspective the world doesn't revolve around the player character. In MMO games the player thinks that their character is the most important to them. The system doesn't really change.

I guess it depends on your definition of role playing. IMHO, You're hardly playing a role if there's no story to follow. Creating your own role is called living, not role playing. I'm obviously an important person to myself, compared to the rest of the world. This is not the same as being dragged into a conflict with an evil empire that wants to rule the world and being the only one with a pair to do something about it. Although you make choices along the way, there can be an ultra detailed plot under the skin of your adventure. These things are just not possible in MMO environments. They are possible with a small group, but not with thirty small groups.

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I dont see why it should take the insane time listed here. Surely all that is needed is a good development team (take Neverax for instance) and great design concepts, nothing this board couldn't come up with.

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.

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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.

Are we talking about binary games? I'm not an expert on pen and paper games, but do they not use a game master of some kind, who governs the story? That's quite a different situation.

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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.

This is where your development team adds ten more years onto the ETA. Creating an interesting epic story is incredibly difficult. Creating one that dynamically changes without being a complete bore is nearly impossible. And dynamic stories alone are not going to add role playing to MMORPGs. You'll need hundreds of dynamic stories. Like I said before, you may as well let the players become the stories themselves.

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The Matrix is a perfect example of what happens. A character unplugs. He has told his friends he is going back to the real world and will jack back in again soon. His friends who might depend on him if they are going to fight the machines will go back to their HQ and prepare battleplans and equipment, train, or even jack out themselves.

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.

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The question or roleplay in MMORPGs could go on a lot longer, but my eyes hurt, and if you are up to this, I bet yours do too!

The MMO sub genre has a ton of potential, but I don't think any of it fits into the RPG category. They are two conflicting ideas.

your posts are very helpful as i can see how many different opinions there are on mmorpg games.
When I was working on my first mmorpg I had an option in character creation where you choose a stroyline to follow out of 4 different ones. I had side quests planned out as well for extra experience/prizes etc but realised choosing a storyline makes no sense and is pretty stupid.
After that I thought more to making the game very versatile and change by what players do for example. I laid out the ability for players with the class "builder" were allowed to construct various buildings and sell them to either npc owned towns or players, I new however that eventually the world would be filled with towns and not much environment left to traverse so I planned to let players be able to destroy buidlings as well making the owner become an enemy or if you attacked a kingdom have their city guard or sodliers attack you on sight.

I came up with many ideas which I wont mention because of such a large list but adding them all together would take a long time and if I had found people don't like that sort of game I would've wasted much time and money.

Another thing I notice in mmorpg games is that you find many players trying to top their mates or get on the high score board(like someone posted earlier). I wanted to make my game so that you select your 3-4 classes so players could create a varied mix in abilities they could and couldn't use so that way player groups could be based around a few players with different specialities for example 1 warrior/knight type character who could be the tank of the group and another player could be a healer and help protect the tank player with healing magic and other players could have roles which form a well made team.

This is may sound good to some people but I know there are many people who are out there to be the best and have the max number for every skill and stat the get get stronger in. The fact is in real life you either specialize in something and be great at it or you could be good at many things but not the best. If I end up restarting my mmorpg game I'd have so if your going to do sword combat for hours on end and not use magic or ranged weaponry naturally your skill in them is going to deterirate although not by alot but it will. I'd also have that some skills help raise others like cutting down trees and mining would improve your strength and riding animals like horses alot would inprove your trust and capabilities of riding other animals without being attacked or thrown off.

Oh and to Kest's first post I don't think I ever said it was my first game I have made rpg's before and other games :)

I could go on for alot more but I have rambled on and probably bored you enough for one post.