There are those who have come before, and this is what they''ve done.
They made mission goals, and said "complete these". They then made weapons, and ammo, and guards. They also made traps, and doors, and keys. Lastly came the tactical autoguns.

This is all you''re telling me, Naz. We need mission goals? That''s already been done. This isn''t a CRPG, remember? A CRPG should NEVER have skilling of anykind. Therefore you don''t have to worry about the actual working of the climbing skill. Imagine if you had to practice things in basic training, and if you didn''t get your climbing up enough, you''d have touse a grapel to get into the castle. But the grapel makes NOISE. THEN i can see a reason for it... but the people should never actually "play" bootcamp. They might pick skills for their character to have.. and thus make a FPRPS (First-Person Role-Playing Shooter) hybrid, but nothing more.
Going to the actual MMORPG aspect of things, mission goals would be futile. There is no way to WIN in an MMORPG game. So, now that you''ve clipped that from players (the ability to win) what then do you replace it with? You''ve got the combat aspect, which we can all agree is fun to do, but lacks purpose.. and then you''ve got the other skills, which suck to do but have a purpose.
How, then, do you make combat have purpose, and fun, along with making other skilling have purpose and fun?
This is the essential question i''m trying to figure out. I also think we need to cut diablo from being discussed here. It is NOT an MMORPG. It''s a CRPG with multiplayer capability. BIG difference. If you want, speak of Everquest, in which people run around doing basically the same thing as in diablo, but monsters regenerate from nothingness. If i was going to do this, i''d at least come up with an excuse as to why things came from nowhere.. Half-life does this well..

J

Moot point. Niphty is fundamentally wrong abut what I have said in the past, because he really enjoys not listening to me. I have never once entertained the notion of violence in games being wrong, especially not that we should eliminate it as he claims is my philosophy in the first post.

Violence is awesome, that doesn''t justify 3000 irrelevant encounters of violence against some species who has nothing to do with me other than wasting my time. I''m not even going to argue a point with someone who ignores me when I make sense and drowns out anyone else who does as well.

quote: Original post by Niphty

Ok, now.. to bring back the inspiration of Landfish to the boards, and to make Naz happy at the sharing of ideas.. i''ve much to discuss.

Tonight, having finished off Orson Scott Card''s newest book, Shadow of the Hegemon, I sat idlly by watching my girlfriend merilessly shoot crossbow bolts into goblins. I began to ponder things from the book, which had me in a philisophical mood. Then i watched her playing, watched the intensity of it.. her anticipation of the next strike against the goblin hordes. *THIS*, I realized, is why people play these games. That caused me to stop, and think.. if Landfish had his way, and this element was removed, what would fill the game time?

Now, step back and think about this. Take away combat from a game.. the anticipation of some foe coming along for you to kill, and what''s left.. you''ve simply got to content yourself on working other skills. But this is the very thing we''re also trying to avoid.. mindless clicking to gain skills to get levels. But combat is NOT mindless clicking. There''s a randomness about it.. there''s a reason to do it again and again.. it was different all the time, it changed, the situation changed.. forced you to think, consider all things.. assess your situation, and make strategic warfare. If you didn''t, you died.. you lost a level, some skill, something. But if you won.. you GAINED things. This excitement, this utter bare anticipation, is why people play these games. The fact that you can''t predict what''ll happen. I mean, what person is content fighting an enemy they can easily kill? They want bigger and better challenges!

Now we, as developers, sit here pondering stealing the one thing most people look forward to.. all for what? Landfish? Think about it good.. and hard. People want to gain something from their time. They want to do something and have something result from it. They want progress, they want to feel like their time spent meant something, some reward. This has been discussed before.. but i don''t think many people ever really critically analyzed this situation to the full extent.
Take out combat, and you force people to do mindless skilling. Take that out, and what''s left to the game? What do you propse people do with their time? Roll dice? Work the farm? What is it that you think would go well here? I''m stuck at an under impass at this point. I''ve begun to analyze every game i played in the past.. and tried to think about why it was good or not good.. and i''ve come to the conclusion that excitement is anticipation. You don''t know what the enemy''s going to do, and you''ve got to be ready to counter it. Anything non-random was boring and grew old pretty fast. Look at tetris.. the most addicting game ever! And what was at it''s core? Random pieces of fixed shape. The speed of the game only factored in to measure just how good you were and how fast you could think.. a leveling system. But the core was the randomness mixed with the constant. Constant peices, but randomly appearing. In the heart, strategy and tactics was what it boiled down to. How could you command the pieces to move as you wanted them? How well could you control what you were given to make the outcome you wanted when faced with a constantly random situation?

Food for thought.. so now give me your thoughts.

J

Just think for a moment that we are able to have such lavish plot with witty AI and an absolutely delicious array of choice in action... That would get people interested.

But is that likely to happen? Ah.. no.

Anyway, I think that there needs to mainly be a single ingredient. CHOICE. I have always found that in a game with a linear story, that I am being pulled along by that story and have really no choice in the matter. It leaves me feeling disempowered. Now, if there are a few different paths that a story could take, then that would be absolutely splendid. Choice is alive and it can be used to great effect.

Now we are, or at least I am, getting a little off topic. So... Landfish is against violence once again? Well, I am sure that we argued this to death for millenia before this thread, but the conclusion was always the same - a little bit of reasoning into the wonderful gory world of death. We just need some motive to be slaughtering everything, and maybe a bit of a more challenging foe than hundreds of mindless undead that we just have to hack through.

UP WITH VIOLENCE! DOWN WITH MINDLESSNESS! There is a difference, no matter how thin the line is

-Chris Bennett of Dwarfsoft - Site:"The Philosophers'' Stone of Programming Alchemy" - IOL
The future of RPGs - Thanks to all the goblins over in our little Game Design Corner niche
          

Maybe you guys should revive the old "What''s With Stats?" column.

(Just joking)

quote: Original post by Landfish

Moot point. Niphty is fundamentally wrong abut what I have said in the past, because he really enjoys not listening to me. I have never once entertained the notion of violence in games being wrong, especially not that we should eliminate it as he claims is my philosophy in the first post.

Violence is awesome, that doesn''t justify 3000 irrelevant encounters of violence against some species who has nothing to do with me other than wasting my time. I''m not even going to argue a point with someone who ignores me when I make sense and drowns out anyone else who does as well.

Landfish, please.. have some substance to your posts. if you''re not gonna come in through here and read everything, then don''t even bother. naz has already said this and explained it. Be usefull or get lost.

The whole point of this wasn''t anythying to do with combat.. it''s how to make other mindless activities as exciting as combat. It''s not a CRPG, it''s not about linearity, it''s solely about how to make stupid skills such as climbing play some role in the game, and be fun to gain skill in. I mean, if you never got climbing till you had to go in the opponent''s base, how long would you sit outside "learning" climbing? Should you not have practiced it ahead of time?
If you do practice it ahead of time, how do we as a developer make that practice fun? Do we put a limit on the ammount you can practice? If not, how do we handle climbing at 50000th level?

J

Niphty: "it''s not about linearity, it''s solely about how to make stupid skills such as
climbing play some role in the game, and be fun to gain skill in."

Maybe you should be asking yourself why you need this skill, and why levelling is achieved by doing it.

Also in a single player game, you would skip the 10/20 seconds of climbing and cut to the result.. if there were no other tactical factors involved.

When it comes to mission goals (and MINUTE-BY-MINUTE GAMEPLAY GOALS) be more imaginative than talking about keys or shotguns. Think about mining for ammo, blowing ways round doors or picking the locks, think about training giant frogs so you can ride on their backs. etc.

(And Niphty, stop misrepresenting Landfish''s thoughts.).

Niphty, okay, I see what you''re saying. My only point was not to worry about making using the skill fun, worry about making why you''re using the skill fun.





"All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be --Pink Floyd
Need help? Well, go FAQ yourself.

Ketchaval,
Yes, that''s what I''m thinking too. Concerning the end result of why you''re using a skill could be implemented in a game where you have linear mission type goals or one that''s completely freeform where the player makes his/her own goals.





"All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be --Pink Floyd
Need help? Well, go FAQ yourself.

Ketch, First off.. it''s an MMORPG.. climbing is a useful skill SOMEWHERE. but it is NOT something i would require to level, nor did i mention anything to this effect.
The question WAS, once again, how do you make the gaining of this kind of skill fun, realistic, and exciting?
The reason it''s needed is because at some point your character might want to climb a tree and get a better view on where they are, or what''s going on nearby. However, you cannot simply WHOOSH! climb a tree! No, you must start small, learn some.. and then climb bigger things. We''re allowing players to pick skills they would have picked up as a child (what kid hasn''t climbed a tree? but who''s climbed enough to be considered as having a "useful" ammount of knowledge in such area?) So, to this effect, how do you make climbing other trees, once that AREN''T nessicary to complete some MISSION or some such other "GOAL" other than to possibly have the opportunity to climb a tree in the future which would provide you some benefit of a goal THEN, an actual FUN thing to do while being realistic. I mean, do theives routinely go out and scale walls? I doubt it. They''re just good. They got lucky once, and gained some knowledge.. and they did it again.. got lucky again, and viola, they''re a master wall climber!
But nowadays, MMORPGs make you sit around and actually SKILL some retarded skill like climbing OVER and OVER in order to be able to do often pointless thing. I don''t want to fall into this trap of forcing people to continually skill something which won''t do them any good.. and those that don''t need to use it, won''t ever have to bother with it unless they want. But those who it would be useful for.. the rangers and thieves and such.. how do you make it so that they''re not hating the designer (me) for making them practice something boring that they might only use once.

In understanding what Naz has tried to say on this.. that would mean giving each time they climb some sort of goal. Most games make you have to have climbing to gain a level.. but is that a justified goal? Players dislike having to do something like this to attain a level.. so the goal becomes worthless. Following this, how do you find a goal of value, while being semi-realistic, to make people practice this skill?

And Ketch, don''t defend landfish, if he can''t do it himself, then you should know you can''t do it for him. If he would explain his thoughts, there''d be no "misrepresentation" of them, as you call it. You interpret his sayings your way, and i mine. If you can''t be a man and get over the fact that we see things MUCH differently, then you might as well go away before you get in trouble and blame me for it.

J

Niphty,
In your example, my vision of the goal of climbing would be to see what's around. Although, I see that you're particularly thinking in terms of gaining skill through practice, so I see that I was totally OT...sorry about that...

Perhaps the whole practice the skill thing shouldn't be included. It is rather pointless. It could be better to just allocate a certain number of points throughout the skills then just have them stay the same throughout. This would simulate which skills the player has been trained in throughout their life and thus which ones they're good with.

I will have to think more of this...





"All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be --Pink Floyd
Need help? Well, go FAQ yourself.


Edited by - Nazrix on February 12, 2001 7:58:07 PM