Just posting a 2nd topic on something else that has been bugging me recently with MMORPG''s. Too many heroes!! Everyone in a MMORPG wants to be the hero.... all go out fighting and adventuring creating an artificial feeling. The only other alternative usually offered is to take up trading, which can be fun at times, but generally I equate it to being as much fun as working in stocks and shares (not my "thing" if you hadnt guessed!!) So what other alternative methods could be offered to character development, what other careers could be offered that would not become tiresome and dull, afterall in the perfect realistic environment 98% of us would probably be commonfolk doin not much other than answering questions NPC stylee!! So what compromise could be implemented so that we are not overwhelemed with a million and one heroes a few thousand traders and not much else, and how would this compromise be implemented into a MMORPG? I''ve only just thought about this aspect of MMORPGs so do not have much of my own ideas to suggest for commenting yet, but may add some soon, I''m looking for others thoughts for a little inspiration first. A couple of ideas to get things started though. Utilising my ideas for deformable terrain (see my previous post) a player could take up the career of a fortress designer, offering for the right price to construct an "invincible fortress" suited to the specified location. Again utilising my previous idea, a player could build and maintain a tavern, charging players to rest up for the night and restock on supplies, it could be made more fun by allowing the owner to occasionally have to deal with problems created by owning such a place. ie dealing with bar brawls, mysterious strangers, totally outta their face players making a fool out of themselves etc... Open for further suggestions, again thanks for readin'' Steve AKA Mephs

Good topic although I think Ultima''s system is about as indepth as something other than the "hero" will go. Face it, when "most" people play a fantasy game, they are playing to get away from reality, ie. bills, work, responsibility... Now I think that any of the trades you mentioned would go great as a side skill. JMHO.


GRELLIN

CGP | IYAOYAS

Merchant: Unfortunately probably a very boring profession. While some people may enjoy doing it and if there are a decent number of RPers it would be rather successful, but for the mostpart, it would be largely a boring thing to do.

Deform the scenery? You''re giving my engine programmers nightmares. I suggested the same thing and they like to wanted to ring my neck. I''ve since given up on the idea for the time being.

Of course I do like the idea of having playable professions and I really like the idea of them being able to play professions as more than just ''sidejobs''. In EQ even the master jeweler became pretty easy to find. Why? Because it was easy enough to actually be a sidejob. Where do you run into master tradesmen, in town in a trade quarter or out adventuring cutting up baddies? I know where I go when I want to buy new earrings for my wife and it''s not to a football game.

I''m sure you''re asking me why would anyone want to do that, but think about it a minute. How much increased value would a master weaponsmith have to a guild if it took just as long to master that skill as it took to master using the weapons he made? He''d be invaluable. He would easily be the reason why some people would join the guild. Same thing for master tailors and jewelers and other skills. You think that mages guild wouldn''t kill for a master glassblower/potter? Of course they would.

Make the skills valuable and people will end up spending the time to learn the skills and get just as much enjoyment from being known as a master tradesman as they would from going out and killing things. I know a lot of people who played UO just to do the tradeskills, they never killed anything beyond what they needed for their trade. Of course the fact that they would commonly get PKd like it was nothing was pretty annoying, so make those skilled tradesmen valuable and all of a sudden those PKs find themselves without the needed specialized items that those tradesmen in trade guilds could provide.

With so many heroes, the game itself usually ends up seeming like some sort of common harvest rather than a world-impacting role play.

I suppose it''s up to the player to focus on the storylines presented by the NPCs. That''s part of the problem with MMORPG''s. They can be fun, but it''s the responsibility of the player to maintain the focus that makes it fun.

but everyone wants to be the hero? you cold say that heros even level 1 need monstrous amounts of cash. indicating playing a hero is something you do in the _endgame_

basically in this incarnation. your world is a simulation. the big draw is that people like the simulation. thats what your saleing. note this is different then current mmorg because in current mmorg''s they are saleing dungeons and adventure. they are saleing adventure on the box thats what people even people just starting want for their dollars.

But i think there is room for a fantasy world simulator if its immersive enough. keeping in mind that UO tried this and didnt fail on alot of levels. it didnt fail on some of the simulation elements. and it didnt fail fiscally.

i believe the mmrpg will continue to diversify. Right now its a few big players that are copying each other to try to take a stab out of the entire userbase of the other. DAOC for example didnt target a type of EQ player it targeted EVERY EQ player. thats not your typical startup business model. it works when the market is small but it will fail if applied in a crowded market.

so before you scoff at this idea of simulated world remember its not trying to grab every type of player in the other games. were target a specific type of player. for example at the board meeting room you might over here: i want 30% of the tradeskill centric people in EQ and DAOC to come to our game. This is business. note that he didnt target everyone in the other games he targeted just the tradeskillers. Why? cause now you can design a product. SPECIFICALLY and PURPOSELY designed NOT to sale the SAME thing as other players. this is how you enter crowded markets.

So can this be done can you sale "fun" in a simulated RPG world that isnt saleing adventure. I think so.

"justify that"

The first thing i said when i saw The Sims is why couldnt my baldurs gate charactes interact with the world like this? Wow the quick answer is are you kidding the baldurs gate engine is bmps and triggers it has no sense of objects. thats the technical answer but its not the spirit of what i was asking.

Why couldnt my fantasy baldurs gate characters interact with the world like my Sims based on their needs. For example if your hero wants to have fun and the party hits the tavern then the simhero is going to have fun. if your on the street and your simhero will enter act with the world based on his/her profile. also if your simhero has needs then you have to deal with them in addition to adventuring. thats what i thought for a future rpg. but i put that idea away for a bit. and note that this marraige is marrying one of the most succesful all time genres with the biggest saleing game of all time. how can this fail miserably if implemented properly.

moving on in the justification that simulated rpg world could steal some market.

now the greatest saleing game of all time is going online. The Sims. frankly it will sale but whats there ? not much. i propose that project SimHero (joke name) as a marraige of UO and Sims online has a even broader market then EQ or Sims if you package it right. I think at that board meeting where the guy said "i want 30% of the tradeskillers in EQ and DaoC to come to our game" he might have also said "and i want 30% of the Sims online in 1 year"

A simulated RPG world where the simulation is more important then the adventure will have critics but your not saleing the same thing as a MMRPG that is saleing adventure. Your product has more cross market appeal.

Hmm,
thinking more on the subject of deformable terrain,
I don''t think it would be so hard to achieve, all you''d have to do is include a few of the map making elements as "spells" or whatever in the game.

Basic example - raising a hill from a flat landscape

All that would have to be done is to create a circular formation of polygons over the intended hill area, cast a ray from this circle and all ground polygons this ray collides with would have their vertexes raised by a factor dependant upon their distance from the centre of the circle, using a function process to calculate the vertex points during the transformation to create an animation of the effect.

Thats just one very rough idea (I''m only just re-exploring games programming but picking it up again pretty quick)

I''m sure other methods of terrain deformation wouldnt be too hard to create, especially given that my intended game will be fantasy based where weapons for one are less likely to deform terrain than they would in a futuristic RPG (ie bows vs rocket launchers!!) {note I havent excluded the chance that they may do so... ie siege weapons and the like}

This itself would bring up other factors like what happens when the terrain becomes so deformed that it is unrecognisable as any form of a playable map? Something I''ve yet to consider too deeply, perhaps my next area of thinking.

Steve AKA Mephs

Some really good points in here, and I agree, making players skills more valuable is the way of the future. Give them professions to choose from & develop. Make it take a lot of effort(and time) to become a master. Let''s take a swordsmith for example, what will the player actually ''do''? We don''t want them getting into a repetitive routine of hammering out steel all day, that would be exceedingly boring I would think. That''s starting to sound like going to work, not playing a game. We have to remember that our ultimate goal is to make a game that''s fun to play. I don''t have an answer for what a swordsmith could actually ''do'' while in-game, just sputtering some ideas.

As for the deformable terrain thing, remember the training area in Red Faction? The first thing I did was load up on all my munitions and start ''digging''. I went straight down. I climbed back out and reloaded again =) I delved deep like the dwarves. Eventually I came to a mysterious new terrain type that couldn''t be deformed. I found the limit. This brings me to Mephs point, "what happens when the terrain becomes so deformed that it is unrecognisable as any form of a playable map?" because I would be the guy that deformed it beyond recognition =) Makes me think maybe it shouldn''t be quite so deformable, I was taking out what must have been hundreds of pounds of earth with each blast. I could dig probably 30 feet without even reloading. I say at least make it a bit more difficult to deform, otherwise you''ll get players like me who''ll dig just to dig.

Just my thoughts

quote:

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Original post by Mephs
Just posting a 2nd topic on something else that has been bugging me recently with MMORPG''s. Too many heroes!! Everyone in a MMORPG wants to be the hero.... all go out fighting and adventuring creating an artificial feeling.

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So is that your only problem with it... the "artificial feeling"? I''ll take artificial over boring any day. I don''t even see why it''s artificial. In cultures where monsters were a common and real threat, it would not be uncommon for pretty much everyone to take up arms.

I don''t really think there''s a problem as such. People like fighting and killing stuff because they can''t do it in real life. Even those who like trade skills tend to like to be an adventurer also.

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just riffing off Kylotan''s post a bit here:

I, for one, would play a well-made game of this type. I don''t play any MMORPG''s for the very fact that they *don''t* offer this kind of experience. (I tried UO, but the trades weren''t nearly deep enough. Close, but the PKers were the nail in the coffin of my UO account)

I don''t think that it will be well-implemented if you are going off the basis of adventurer vs. tradesmen. *Nobody* will pay $12.00 a month to shoe horses and compute sales tax. If I''m a blacksmith, I don''t want to be manning the shop very often myself. I want a hired NPC for that kind of thing. I do want to manage ledgers and such, set prices, research exotic weaponry, etc. *But* this more "dry" style of play shouldn''t consume the whole game. Rather, I''d want a highly stylized conception of the whole experience. I''d want quests for rare metals, quests to win the favor of a wizard who will teach me some form of weapons enchantment to give me the edge over the competition, I''d want mafioso-style tactics to use against the other weaponsmiths in the area, gaurdian imps to defend against would-be thieves, etc.

Other trades could be made equally compelling. If your lands are harsh for travellers, a merchant making it from one city to another along a trade route could find plenty of challenge and gameplay. Farmers could defend personally against the mini-drakes taking up residence in the cornfields. Very wealthy tradesmen could become involved in local politics, and have some influence over policy (if the smithy down the road is making a killing off his new mithril plate armor, perhaps the mayor could be swayed to bump the tax rate on mithril enough to put the choke on him).

The key''s to boil the trade down to the essentials that make it interesting. Putting the player into the same roles that NPC shopkeepers now play would be extremely dull, obviously, but competition between tradesmen, questing for trade-related advantages, and a modicum of business simulation could make your MMORPG a real alternative for that certain "30%".

As far as people all wanting to play the hero- there''s some truth to that, but moreso, people want something interesting to do, and in the context of an MMORPG, they want recognition for it from fellow players. At least one of my friends switched to DAoC on account of its deep bread-making simulation alone! (he is kind of an odd one though)

If you see the Buddha on the road, Kill Him. -apocryphal

I was going to do a post about this some time ago , in fact I might have Oh! I can’t remember,, here are my thoughts
Lets say 10,000 people play this MMORPG at peak time split across 5 servers (Déjà vu ) and there is a “to many heroes” problem. High level Players book their turn to slay the dragon on the off game website. When the Goblin spawns 6 bored players stand up kill him then sit down again to talk about the weather.

So the powers that be split the game into 50 servers with 200 players each? after all the heavy stuff like graphics sound etc came on the CD and are sitting on the client side, no big deal technology wise me thinks.
This solves the “to many heroes” problem but causes a couple of new ones .
1. at none peak times the goblin beat the living c*%p out of you because there is no one to help you , then 4 more goblins spawn.
2. your real life friends are split across many servers some of which you cant even create a character on because the powers that be are limiting server population to avoid the “to many heroes” problem =)
I don’t wish to be negative for I have thought about this problem many times in the past.
I’m trying to think of a server configuration which would solve these problems. Perhaps there could be a large city where everyone with the game can meet up before heading off on quests and other heroic adventures..