What it seems to come down to is that people want their MMOs to closely mimick single-player games, but with co-op and the presence of noobers to whom you are superior. Story, linear quests, a clear hierarchy of equipment that scales with your level so you're always getting better on the same scale that everyone else is measured on all reek of instant gratification and shallow gameplay. As long as you go in there and walk on the treadmill, you get a level up and a grateful NPC populace and phat lewt.

I don't like that, myself, but I don't like most MMOs, so I guess it's just a matter of not liking the conventions of the genre that are most popular right now.

It seems to me that Robert4818 is in the same position I'm in. SO we can either discuss "MMO" as a million-dollar enterprise that makes its money by catering to the inclinations of the user base, or we can have a less practical discussion about an MMO that accomplishes something other than fiscial success.

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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage Story, linear quests, a clear hierarchy of equipment that scales with your level so you're always getting better on the same scale that everyone else is measured on all reek of instant gratification and shallow gameplay. As long as you go in there and walk on the treadmill, you get a level up and a grateful NPC populace and phat lewt.

If you don't like leveling, equipment, stats, quests, and stories, then I really don't think you should be trying to call your dream game an MMORPG. How about MMOVE4CAKTD for Massively Multiplayer Online Virtual Environment For Complaining About Kids These Days?

I can't really say it better than Saruman. But I'll try.

In reference to WoW, one of the most important design decisions made was accessibility. This is where EQ failed. Sacrificing fun for simulation mechanics is a big mistake. All of your points relate to that argument.

You notice the gun in Half-Life never jams? Or it reloads automatically? Or they don't present 10 different ways to navigate the environment? All of those were intentional design decisions that removed the simulation to preserve the fun.

Does anyone miss your character becoming overburdened in EQ with equipment? Or having to eat food just to be able to walk a straight line? Or having to run to your corpse and equip every single piece of gear? Or losing experience for dying? The answer is a resounding NO.

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I think it's a matter of perspective. What you call "being led by the hand" is what other people call "an engaging storyline". What you call "being rewarded for finding your own way" is what other people call "i spent an hour running around the stupid woods trying to find the quest guy before I gave up and googled his location".

Why does everything have to be completely linear for it to be a good story, why do you only have to have one quest person to whom directs you exactly where to go. Why couldnt you have several npcs which tell you possible ways of doing something or they give you more or differing information and you have to choose which way and how to approach it. Depending on how involved you get with this you could just have the quick simple quest fix or a more complex convoluted quest.

As long as it always has approachable ways with npcs that know something or they know someone who knows something. And they dont expect you to go fishing and pull things out of thin air then I dont see how you can waste much time with it.

The quest log should remain extreamly useful, and designed to where you can quickly return to where you were in a quest before leaving. Counters are useful, as are waypoints when appropriate. (I.E.if you are given directions to a place, a waypoint is appropriate. If you are told to find a secret place then its not)

My original complaint is that it goes too far in leading by the hand. Simplifying the quest log requires that the quests be better written.

EQ did alot of things that I didn't like and don't really want to see come back. Corpse runs, de-leveling, etc.

But there were quite a few things that helped with immersion that I really wish they would bring back.

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Original post by Torquemeda Why does everything have to be completely linear for it to be a good story, why do you only have to have one quest person to whom directs you exactly where to go. Why couldnt you have several npcs which tell you possible ways of doing something or they give you more or differing information and you have to choose which way and how to approach it. Depending on how involved you get with this you could just have the quick simple quest fix or a more complex convoluted quest.

Due to time and money constraints, as you try to make your plotline more and more nonlinear, the dialogue gets thinner, the NPC's become cardboard-cutouts, the involvment with the player's character drops, and the overall sense of story arc disappears. Look at the "masters of nonlinear": the elder scrolls. In Daggerfall and Morrowind, almost all of the NPC's were carbon copies of eachother; almost none of them had any personality at all. The majority of the quests were copies of eachother with "what to get" and "who to bring it to" shuffled around a bit. Oblivion got a little better, but overall the NPC's and plotline were still relatively unexciting and plodding. Don't get me wrong; I love the games, and their nonlinearity is a big part of what I liked about them. But a nonlinear game like that can not craft the same dramatic story that someone will get with a game like Final Fantasy, where the plotline can be fast, written in advance, and have deep interaction with the players.

So, you can have a "good" story in a nonlinear game, but until someone creates a dynamic plot generation AI, you will never have a "great" story if you make your game too nonlinear.

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Original post by makeshiftwings So, you can have a "good" story in a nonlinear game, but until someone creates a dynamic plot generation AI, you will never have a "great" story if you make your game too nonlinear.

Not an MMO, but I think Fallout is a good example of this. Very nonlinear, very shallow story. I don't think there is an easy way to make Fallout's story any deeper without losing what was great about Fallout. The game even poked fun at its story or lack thereof. I think it was Fallout 2 where at one point someone asks what you're doing and you say something along the lines of, "Well, technically, I'm on a quest for the Holy GECK to save my village. However, I spend most of my time rummaging through people's homes and... Oooo, look, shiny!"

On the other hand, Final Fantasy wouldn't be as popular without its linear narrative.

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Original post by Way Walker Quote: Original post by makeshiftwings So, you can have a "good" story in a nonlinear game, but until someone creates a dynamic plot generation AI, you will never have a "great" story if you make your game too nonlinear. Not an MMO, but I think Fallout is a good example of this. Very nonlinear, very shallow story. I don't think there is an easy way to make Fallout's story any deeper without losing what was great about Fallout. The game even poked fun at its story or lack thereof. I think it was Fallout 2 where at one point someone asks what you're doing and you say something along the lines of, "Well, technically, I'm on a quest for the Holy GECK to save my village. However, I spend most of my time rummaging through people's homes and... Oooo, look, shiny!" On the other hand, Final Fantasy wouldn't be as popular without its linear narrative.

Yes, exactly. Linear and nonlinear are two different styles, and niether is inherently superior. Too many people have begun to hear "nonlinear" as a new buzzword like "pixel shaders" and are assuming that nonlinear automatically means better.

I agree: there's nothing inherently better or worse about a linear or non-linear RPG as long as it's realised that they're different beasts; to the point where a good linear RPG like Final Fantasy and a good non-linear RPG like Fallout really shouldn't be considered in the same genre at all (score another point for scrapping the whole "RPG as a genre" meme [smile]).

However that being said I'm still partial to a bit more flexibility being added to linear RPG plot paths. I'm more fond of what I term "multi-linear" stories, where there are a small number of ways to solve each problem. Bioware's recent RPGs are like this; there's usually a "good" and "evil" way to solve each problem. It's essentially in the same vein as a linear RPG, except you have the choice between a few linear paths.

I'm also fond of hybrid approaches that have linear objectives but freeform approaches to solving them. While not an RPG, Thief is my favourite example of this; you're given an objective and set loose in a level, but there usually isn't a single linear path to solving said objective. I think this would work well in RPGs, where you still have milestones or "choke points" where linear storytelling can be used, but the player is offered some freedom in playing style to get to the mandatory story milestones.

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Original post by Trapper Zoid I'm also fond of hybrid approaches that have linear objectives but freeform approaches to solving them. While not an RPG, Thief is my favourite example of this; you're given an objective and set loose in a level, but there usually isn't a single linear path to solving said objective. I think this would work well in RPGs, where you still have milestones or "choke points" where linear storytelling can be used, but the player is offered some freedom in playing style to get to the mandatory story milestones.

Since I haven't played Thief, I think of Deus Ex. [smile]

Care needs to be taken, though. I'd say if you're going to send the player through story-choke-points, then don't give them many (if any) story choices. Make the choices game-play related. Deus Ex was fairly good at this, I'm guessing Thief was better.