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Original post by Telastyn That the depth of a game has nothing to do with its graphical style. An isometric environment isn't any easier/faster to make than a fully 3d one these days. That the games are... let's say 'less interactive' is not related to that.

I can't say I agree with that. Content creation in 3D is a lot more expensive than drawing a simple sprite. Even just simple stuff like placing 2 tiles next to each other seamlessly is more difficult when you have floating point precision problems on the seams. If 3D was as easy as 2D then I would expect most indie games to be 3D or made with 3D engines but that isn't what we see in practice.

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I suspect that if someone took Oblivion and MMO'd it then similar libraries or constructs could develop even though it's the standard 3d environs.

I don't know how this relates to the issue because Oblivion, while quite detailed for a modern RPG, falls far short of the customisation options in Ultima Online or even the single player Ultima games up to VII at least. Single player RPGs have lost detail with the move to 3D. My guess is that this is no coincidence.

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Original post by Kylotan Quote: Original post by Telastyn That the depth of a game has nothing to do with its graphical style. An isometric environment isn't any easier/faster to make than a fully 3d one these days. That the games are... let's say 'less interactive' is not related to that. I can't say I agree with that. Content creation in 3D is a lot more expensive than drawing a simple sprite. Even just simple stuff like placing 2 tiles next to each other seamlessly is more difficult when you have floating point precision problems on the seams. If 3D was as easy as 2D then I would expect most indie games to be 3D or made with 3D engines but that isn't what we see in practice.

In the long run, I don't think 3D models are more expensive than sprites, especially with character-heavy games, considering everything a 3D model can do that a simple sprite can't. I suspect most indie games are sprite based because the first step into 3D is much bigger than it is with sprites. Setting up the physics/rendering/animation engines, etc.

For me personally, once the engines are up and running, 3D is a lot easier than 2D. I might be able to draw a cool static sprite guy a little faster than I can model a cool skinmesh guy. But my skinmesh guy is ready to be thrown into the game, where he can already walk, run, shoot, climb ladders, lose limbs, smile, cry, and die, using existing assets. By the time I draw all of these frames for my sprite guy, I could have built five or more skinmesh models.

There are also other benefits. Later on, I may want to add a new gameplay feature to pull dagger weapons out of boots. Rather than go back and update every humanoid sprite character in my game with 4-10 new static animation frames, I just need to create a single animation. If I want strong characters to stand with more of a fortified pose, I only need to add two animations: normal stance and fortified stance, then as any human, lizardman, android, or zombie builds their strength, they'll dynamically shift into the fortified stance. If I were playing with simple sprites, I wouldn't even consider adding something like this, because the cost outweighs the result.

Eh, sorry, I wandered a little far there. Guess I have a strong opinion about this subject.

Who are these people that prefer graphics to gameplay? It's a big cliché I know, that the "casual" gamers look for nothing but graphics while the "real" gamers look for gameplay, but I'm not sure I buy it. I don't buy the dichotomy between graphics and gameplay to begin with (graphics affect immersion, which is part of gameplay, right?), but let's swing with it regardless. I mean it seems to be the norm for people to declare their allegience to gameplay (this goes back as far as I can remember in NES magazines), while at the same time stating - as a fact - that this puts them in a minority for doing so. I've honestly never met anybody that declared a solomn allegience to graphics over gameplay. So where are all these people, supposedly in the majority? Where are the people who say "I enjoyed X more, but Y looks better, therefore Y is the better game"?

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Original post by Dirichlet Who are these people that prefer graphics to gameplay?

Me. Kinda. I won't look twice at a game that isn't pretty. But I care a lot about gameplay. But as it rolls, I'll buy the pretty game and be sad it sucks, but I won't buy the one that "has great gameplay" if it looks like ass. The problem with gameplay is that it's as subjective as art, except you can't tell what it's going to be like by looking at the back of the box. I think a lot of people go gaga over screenshots when deciding what to purchase; trying to try gameplay before you buy is impossible.

A lot of people I work with are similar. And we're all game developers; you'd think we'd be a little more forgiving of bad art [smile]

-me

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Original post by Palidine trying to try gameplay before you buy is impossible.

Funny that reminds me a time when you could get in magazine or download a demo of the game wich usually consisted in the first stage or part of it.

That isn't a common sight nowadays.

HOUSING: AN EXAMPLE

Every MMORPG board I've visted in the past 10 years contains the same people asking for the UO feature set, particularly housing, which hasn't been done right in a MMORPG since.

Every attempt at housing I've seen to date (Horizons excluded) has been exactly the opposite of that for which players have been asking.

Ironically enough, the loud and obnoxious l3wt PK crowd has been getting what they want - how many versions of Shadowbane, and Shadowbane II (Darkfall) do we need to watch fail in order to learn that shallow unrestricted PVP attracts nothing but hyper-competative people who love to use speed hax and exploits?

Take another look at housing:
1: It gives the game a series of built in long term quests, that is, to get a house. In UO people used to make money scouting out and selling information on housing space, among other things.

2: "Renting" large guild halls out in the major cities - rents being set by auction - could be a major money sink (one that adjusts automatically to inflation) for large influential guilds. This goes a long way to solving the economic problems that infiltrate these games.

3: In UO a large part of the population is paying the monthly fee just to keep their housing space open. I should think customers keeping an account for years after they play it - just to rent 1MB of space on your server - is a heck of a business plan. Compare with the PK crowd that checks into a game for 4 weeks, haxs it, and then runs off to the next flavor of the month once they tire of the one-dimensional world.

The reason UO is still around after 10 years (while numerous other 1 dimensional 3D worlds have flopped) is because it had depth. Housing is an exmple of what made UO is so dang simple, and yet elegant, and yet nobody to date has touched it.

I guess I'll wait around until someone "gets" it.

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In UO so many things were "frobbable" - that is, they could be picked up or interacted with in some way.

I'd like to see UO2 where even more of the environment was this way.

Can a 3D MMORPG world support a large population of players and have "frobbable" stuff lying around all over the landscape? Can a 3D world be more than pretty postcards - can it be something full of items which a person may interact with?

This is why I prefer isometric - maybe the 3D technology has evolved though.
Every 3D world I've been in is empty.

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Original post by Meh_Gerbil HOUSING: AN EXAMPLE Every MMORPG board I've visted in the past 10 years contains the same people asking for the UO feature set, particularly housing, which hasn't been done right in a MMORPG since.

In my experience, the UO crowd is a vocal minority. Very vocal, yes, but still basically a minority.

SWG housing wasn't far from the UO model, and (CU/NGE aside) didn't exactly do WoW numbers.

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Original post by Telastyn Quote: Original post by Meh_Gerbil What am I missing here? That the depth of a game has nothing to do with its graphical style. An isometric environment isn't any easier/faster to make than a fully 3d one these days. That the games are... let's say 'less interactive' is not related to that. I suspect that if someone took Oblivion and MMO'd it then similar libraries or constructs could develop even though it's the standard 3d environs.

That is only when you are talking about a company with a fixed group of staff. Some companies have flexible staffing where they hire people on contract for a period of time to work on that one game. So graphics is directly related in that spending more on graphics with artists and animators, will leave you less to spend on programming and script writers etc.

I think Oblivion is a good example because that is exactly a case of graphics taking away from gameplay. Morrowind looked good at the time, but not amazing, but it did however have masses of content. Countless quests, tons of dialogue and there were lots of factions and stacks of depth to the game. Oblivion scaled things back a bit, but went all out on graphics. If they could have afforded to not skip some of the things from Morrowind, and yet still have the massively impressive graphics too, they would have.

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Original post by bakanoodle I feel people's nostalgia for games leaves people jaded. Going back and playing an old game that you have played before brings back the emotions and enjoyment of the first time you played it. Going back and playing an old game that you have NEVER played before, and it becomes much more rare that you will enjoy it. It wasn't until much later that I got around to playing Deus Ex. Many people regard it as an amazing game, however I still think it's just an 'ok' game.

I think a lot of people mistake this for nostalgia when really it's more to do with a product being more impressive at the time it was made. Deus Ex WAS an amazing game because when it was released, there were no other FPS out there with even a fraction of the depth of that game. It was the same with System Shock, you have an incredible game with a wide variety of weapons, different ammunition types depending on what you are shooting at, an RPG stat system in the background, hacking, throwable explosives and grenades, emps and frags, crouching and leaning, interactive objects in the world etc, and all this was before even Quake was released... System Shock came out the same year as Doom 2... the difference is staggering really.

So these games were amazing at the time. Just because they don't seem that special today, doesn't make them any less amazing. In the same way that a modern construction company could rebuild the Egyptian pyramids bigger and better, but that doesn't mean they weren't an incredible achievement at the time.

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Original post by Kest I think the modern gamer population just needs some time to evolve. There's a lot of new blood being drawn into the gamer crowds, so simple is good enough. However, as gamers get familiar with virtual worlds, I think they'll either quit gaming, or get tired of doing the same simple, shallow, repetitive, cheap, plastic things and want a little more depth. When I was young (-20 years), casual gamers were playing monopoly and checkers, and some had never heard of a Nintendo or PC. Let alone played games like WoW or The Sims. The casual market will always be there, but I think the serious gamer crowd is going to grow to rival it over time.

Yeah that's what I think too. When UO was released, the audience was tiny. Nowdays there is WoW with over 11 million people playing. I think the kind of gamer who would prefer a new UO over a new WoW, is still going to be a minority, but they are a minority that is growing in size all the time. EverQuest for example, was considered a huge success, and yet it never had more than about 400,000 players at it's peak. If it's only 1 in 10 people who want a more UO style game, 10% of WoW's audience is far more than the likes of EverQuest ever had.

Standards have risen though, so it would cost more to make the equivalent game today, but as long as gaming in general is getting more popular, we are getting closer and closer to the stage where more companies can make more good niche games that can satisfy the niche players. It is already happening, but on quite a small scale at the moment.

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Original post by kyoryu In my experience, the UO crowd is a vocal minority. Very vocal, yes, but still basically a minority. SWG housing wasn't far from the UO model, and (CU/NGE aside) didn't exactly do WoW numbers.

The lesson I'm seeing is that the hard-core PK crowd is the vocal minority failing to support game where full and open PVP occurs.

Taking Shadowbane for an example, the last servers standing were the role-play servers where people added content via roleplay. The full and open PVP servers stagnated in about 5 months.

Games like DarkFall and Mortal Online are based on the premise that it was the full PVP of UO '98 that fueled that game's success, yet the evidence indicates exactly the opposite. It was the depth and flexibility to create player hosted events that made that game great and still keeps the numbers at 150,000 players even though the game is 10 years old. (Some of the recent flops would be happy to support those numbers for even 2 years, incidently)

I'm not against a full loot/full PVP world.

I am just expressing amazement that people think that is what makes a game great... while every bit of evidence I've seen indicates the overwhelming majority of people don't support that model.

The real lesson in UO was how to create a world so addictive that thousands of people were willing to put up with the PK menace to get to the in-depth content.

I'll sit back and watch Darkfall fail. I'll keep hoping that someone "gets it" sometime soon - that they will understand what made UO great and set out to update that design for this century's standards.