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Why do not MMORPGs evolve?
eobet
8-bit childhoodSwedenRegistered User regular
8-bit childhoodSwedenRegistered User regular
I think that we've come a long way from Quake to Far Cry 2. But the step from EverQuest to Warhammer or Age of Conan is not that big.
Monsters appear out of thin air and stay in the same spot indefinetly, completely without a care, unaware of its surroundings and basically without any AI whatsoever.
The quests are exactly the same regardless of how many times you play through the game, and the quests are always repetitive in nature (errand boy quests or monster slaying).
Why is this?
I've said this before, but one of the first MMORPGs, Ultima Online, touted before release that all quests would be fully dynamic, and the specific example given was a dragon running out of local food and going away to eat a farmer's sheep, who then announces a quest to slay the dragon.
If any MMORPG would implement that (since UO didn't), I bet it would be considered hugely innovative. If you then had the option to not slay the dragon, but perhaps chase him away or find him some other means of feeding (multiple quest solutions), I suspect it would blow the collective minds of all MMORPG players.
The Lich King expansion to World of Warcraft offered me a crumb of one of my peeves with MMORPGs from day one: Monsters who simply "pop" into existance. That's incredibly mood breaking to me, but in Lich King, I've seen zombies crawl from the ground and dragons being born from fire and it was incredible to watch!
Anyway, let the discussions begin...
EDIT: Odd... some words went missing in the original post... I must be tired...
Monsters appear out of thin air and stay in the same spot indefinetly, completely without a care, unaware of its surroundings and basically without any AI whatsoever.
The quests are exactly the same regardless of how many times you play through the game, and the quests are always repetitive in nature (errand boy quests or monster slaying).
Why is this?
I've said this before, but one of the first MMORPGs, Ultima Online, touted before release that all quests would be fully dynamic, and the specific example given was a dragon running out of local food and going away to eat a farmer's sheep, who then announces a quest to slay the dragon.
If any MMORPG would implement that (since UO didn't), I bet it would be considered hugely innovative. If you then had the option to not slay the dragon, but perhaps chase him away or find him some other means of feeding (multiple quest solutions), I suspect it would blow the collective minds of all MMORPG players.
The Lich King expansion to World of Warcraft offered me a crumb of one of my peeves with MMORPGs from day one: Monsters who simply "pop" into existance. That's incredibly mood breaking to me, but in Lich King, I've seen zombies crawl from the ground and dragons being born from fire and it was incredible to watch!
Anyway, let the discussions begin...
EDIT: Odd... some words went missing in the original post... I must be tired...
Heard the proposition that RIAA and MPAA should join forces and form "Music And Film Industry Association"?
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Simply put: ORPGs cost incredibly large amounts of money and it's an incredibly high-risk investment. Many companies go bankrupt because their MMOGs die out and they don't make a profit. Programming a game that is immersive, highly detailed and fun while also supporting upwards of 10,000 people at a time is just not feasible with current technology. Maybe one day you'll play a game like Morrowind online, but that day is not today. Or tomorrow. Or next Tuesday.
Because Morrowind was mediocre.
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,
You have to pay in-game actors and mods to LARPBP (live action role play by proxy)... and give the "characters" the ability to reward xp and equipment etc.
Then put in an agreed upon real time/real weather system controlled by "the powers to be".
So in this fictional game you can say:
Hey I am an in-game mod who is a jeweler in this town. I have been sending players into this mine to recover shit for me. How about this? Flood everything to trap say twenty or so people down there tonight (the system and world map would have this already designed just for a day like this) and put some zombies of long dead miners rising from the grave to make their lives hell... THEN lets have everyone in town all riled up about going and saving them.
So this would be accomplished by:
Business as usual - send some players in the mine by promising gold for rubies etc.
Trigger the flood scene
Trigger bad weather
Raise the zombies
Raise some fierce animal monsters stirred by the storm above ground
Stand in the middle of the town and say "SAVE THE PEOPLE IN THE MINE! COME ON WE HAVE TO SAVE THEM!"
And then when everyone who is still alive gets out of the mine we all hang out and get rewarded for bravery never before shown in this small town.
That would get gamers pumped.
If, as you say, many if not most companies go bankrupt because of their MMOGs, so why not try to innovate when the risk is so high anyway?
Right now, it is the same concept in several different skins.
(Also, and I guess I'll make an enemy of everyone on this forum, if I haven't already, but I consider Morrowind a step forward in the graphics department only. Otherwise it offers no more depth or nothing more dynamic, than say Ultima or (the old) Fallout.)
And pissed off in a hurry. People just want their fucking quest rewards. They don't want the game to be on hold for them while other players decide if they want to rescue them.
And if they can just teleport out or log off? No sense of immediacy, no sense of risk.
Unless you are one of the players stuck in the mine waiting for rescue
Or the in-game actor isn't multilingual
Or nobody takes the quest
Or any number of things that could possibly go wrong does go wrong
Live events like this are a neat concept but they are far more difficult to pull off than anyone thinks, otherwise stuff like this would happen all the time
EDIT: also people have to be willing to participate, and the people running the show have to be able to think quickly in case someone solves the problem in a way they didn't think of
If something like this happened in Final Fantasy XI (just using it as an example because I play it), I can tell you that if I were one of the people stuck in the mines, I'd warp myself and everyone else there out; since I'm a black mage, one of my spells allows me to teleport people in my party to their home points. Should I get the entirety of the reward since I got everyone else out safely? What about the people who fought through the monsters and the zombie hoarde, only to find out everyone's gotten away already?
Wii: 5024 6786 2934 2806 | Steam/XBL: Arcibi | FFXI: Arcibi / Bahamut
Nonetheless, Ultima, Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 are fucking great games and Morrowind is too.
But asking for the depth and immersiveness of a single-player RPG, let's say Planescape: Torment, is just not possible when you have thousands of other players around you. There is room for innovation and improvement in the MMO genre, but it will take a very large company with really big balls to pull it off.
Out of curiosity, did anything change from Quake to Far Cry 2 that most MMORPGs didn't already have from the beginning? From what I've seen, MMORPGs have been well ahead of the curve in many aspects from the very start, and what we're seeing is other games starting to catch up with them.
When you can put hundreds of people in a moderately small area or allow them to wander through an absurdly massive world, while allowing people to upgrade their characters and possibly work together to overcome challanges that they could not do alone, why bother to innovate any further?
There was an old MMO called "Underlight." Role-playing was enforced. There were no NPCs. The only computer-controlled intelligence was the monsters, and those were considered more environmental hazards than anything.
Other players gave you your quests. Other players determined the outcome of the quest. Other players rewarded you XP or skill gains. Some equipment was found out of spawns in the world. Good equipment was made by other players. There was no money, it was all barter.
The world was shaped by the political Houses, all of which were run by players. And the slightly less political Guilds (who were supposedly focused more on skill development, but of course were just more politics.. Interestingly though, their developments were watched by the mods, and good RPs were programmed into new skills). Each House had a behind-the-scenes mod who would watch what happened, and adjust the world to respond appropriately.
It was interesting to watch as wars were started and stopped.. Bitter enemies became allies.
It was also interesting that through this system, there was an entire House devoted to pacifists. (Because players grant XP through a player-driven, moderated quest system, you can level without killing anyone or anything.) And also that players who were level 1 could wield more power through politics than a much higher level. And that the game stayed interesting to people who stayed level 1.
It died out, as the graphics were wolfenstien 3d-esque. But they had a new version coming out.. It was called Reclamation.
[fake edit] It looks as though progress on Reclamation has stopped due to lack of resources, though there is a call out for anyone who would consider continuing development.
http://www.reclamationgame.com/
[real edit] Oh joy! It looks like players licensed the server from Lyra Studios, and it is now available to play for free.. Looking into this more..
http://www.shadesoftruth.net
[further edit] Oh phooey. Wikipedia: "Underlight: 'Shades of Truth' Down until Further Notice, starting august 12, 2008
The permanent discontinuation of 'Shades of Truth' was announced by it's on-again off-again Managing Director on October 18, 2008 in a brief two sentence reply on their message board after a player inadvertantly stumbled upon their up and running, though unoccupied, server. Currently there is someone looking to purchase the Intellectual Rights to Underlight and is asking for the source code to be released."
It's not really a difficulty thing but a time(Money) thing, UO during the closed beta was fucking awesome, then open beta and every fucking animal on the planet became extinct.
Also, I would enjoy being stuck in the mine so long as there was something to read, but I'm not a fucking moron.
Are you talking about MMOs or Far Cry 2 here? Because really, FPS games haven't changed that much, in fact if you look at something like Ultima Underworld then they've really only gone backwards. And I'm fairly sure a pretty similar arguement could be had of Ultima Online to WoW.
UO is a 2-dimensional game with a clunky interface that wouldn't cut it these days. Playing something as expansive as UO with the polish of WoW or WAR is a pipe-dream at this point.
We had a Game On for it a while back and I played for a couple of days. While it was kinda fun to de-forest an area together with other people and turn the wood into planks and have people going around with carts collecting the wood and putting it in certain places was kinda fun, it's really fucking boring to play when there's no one else around.
I'd love to see a well done MMO that has things that changes because of things that players do and not just what the developers put in the game.
Something that I'd love to see in an online game, is that instead of your character disappearing when you log out, you create a schedule/behaviour plan that your character will follow while logged out. For example, instead of having the guards in a town be NPCs entirely, they could be characters that are logged out and they'd get in game money for being guards.
A tale in the Desert
http://www.atitd.com/
The only problem with that is that I never have more than an hour or so each night to play games, and as it is a massively cooperative game, I never really get far enough to contribute anything, so I always feel like I'm pounding away for nothing.
Oh also, in regards to Underlight which I previously mentioned.. It is the only MMO I've every played with perma-death. You have to be very advanced to perm someone, and it hurts you permanently in the process, but it is possible.
I also don't think that they aren't necessary.
I honestly don't know, and neither do MMO companies.
The trouble is that the massive amounts of money and risk involved make the developers conservative. Innovation is an experiment, and without it there's no data.
However, there is more innovation in MMOs than people (including the accountants that make decisions for MMO companies) think - stuff like Wurm, Atlantica, COH, Eve, A Tale in the Desert - and then even smaller ones that I don't know about. The biggest ones, such as WOW, are the most conservative, and commentators of all types have a nasty habit of ignoring their existence.
I've heard about that, but it seems to have a lot of things in common with Wurm, including why I didn't stick to it.
A polished turd is still brown, I would pay monthly for something as good as the UO alpha/beta or the SWG pre-CU.
Another great innovator, but with graphics like a very old Ultima game, is Dark Ages (originally by Nexon, now run by KRU Interactive, but still at www.darkages.com).
In that game, you required player interaction from the start, as in order to get a job, you needed another player as a mentor. So, the tutorial is basically your contact and interaction with another player.
The law system was also player run, with players voting on other players running for titles like mayor, judges and guards. Players caught violating the current laws could end up in a player run trial and then thrown into jail.
Also, I think for priests to get their mana back, they had to conduct a player run cermon at the church, with players attending, and they did, because after it was over the priest cast a cermon spell which yielded experience points for all.
Similarly, players could hold and attend voluntary lectures discussing the game world in character (and they did), which also yielded experience points in the end.
Every now and again there also was a fair, with players selling goods, services and inventing their own forms of gambling and other mini-games (manipulating in-world items in clever ways). There were also sports and betting.
Two real sports were also invented by players. The first was sumo wrestling, which only monks with the throw command cold participate in. It was simple, you laid down a ring and tried to push the other outside.
The other sport was goblin football, which I think more than monks participated in. It was done by summoning a goblin, which moved around randomly, and trying to get him into the opposing team's goal, either by blocking him off or throwing him (not sure if he could be teleported too).
After I quit the game, I heard that a group of players were holding Shakespeare interpretations in the game in real time. The developers found out and built them a stage where people could sit and they could charge and entrance fee.
Oh, and the battles were real time, and that's 5+ years ago now.
Not a commercial success because nobody ever heard of it, but how's that for innovation?
Isn't there a UO 10th anniversay edition out with high resolution graphics and streamlined interface?
All revamped MMO graphics look like ass and, when given the option, the majority of players choose the classic look for the game due to nostalgia.
I remember that one too
I liked the mentor system though. And IIRC role-playing was enforced in that one too, yes?
I would kill for a 3D version of the Battletech MUSEs and MUSH games that I used to play in the early 90s.
I was addicted to those games so badly, they were the reason I flunked out of college. There was no grind, there was just a lot of good tactical mech vs mech action. it wasn't a shootemup. it was a real time recreation of the board game and it did it very well.
I just think current MMOs cater too much to level grind and to the players who just race through the game. Somehow they need to slow everything down. I just don't understand why people speed through the game as a race to the level cap and I don't think MMOs should cater to it. Instead of a few massive servers. I think they need to have hundreds of smaller servers. allow some players to run some of the servers and modify or change the theme or something. It just needs to be really open ended and allow players to create their own content.
I think you need a game that isn't so dependent on levels and equipment and XP. Sure it was awesome driving around a 100 ton Daishi with Clan elite stats. but some of the most harrowing nailbiting battles I fought were in light or medium mechs with shitty stats and shitty mechs. sure there was a player skill aspect of it, but it was tactics and strategy that won usually and what separated the merely good from the great players. and you can't buy that at some equipment store...you can't wait for that to drop as some phat lewt. you can't level grind to that. you just had to play and learn.
Enlist in Star Citizen! Citizenship must be earned!
There WAS one. It disappeared without a trace in 2001. Here's the wikipedia entry for it.
I played during the beta and it was AWESOME. You got a Commando, and the cash you earned from running missions allowed you to buy bigger and badder Mechs, and they ALL were classic BattleTech mech designs. The Blackjack with the AC/2s were actually fairly good because you can snipe at long range with an AC/2. I would have continued to play it, too, if they didn't shut it down.
Oh, and there was a dynamic Inner Sphere map. You joined any of the Houses, and the better your House performed, the more planets you took. House Liao during the beta was the exact opposite of the House Liao in the BattleTech fiction, as it managed to become an empire the size of the Steiner/Davion alliance.
There is no role playing in it. There are stats and inventories and such, but seriously... where's the story and the role playing.
I think the absolute best conversation to evesdrop on is the far cry 2 discussion on this very board. Someone pretty much summed it up : it had freedom, beautiful clips of story and graphics with gameplay backing it up ... but it wasn't alive. That diamond was hidden in the same suitcase in a carefully created burnt out bus as a set piece on the level you know what i mean?
I would play an mmo if it had real driven story and purpose other then getting armor for my flying horse you know what i mean?
Like seriously one bad ass sword... that;s it. The player who had it got slayed trying to kill a village eating monster and it's just there ... laying there... we all know it... but shit that guy with the ONE BAD ASS SWORD IN THE ENTIRE GAME couldn't kill this thing what the hell are we supposed to do?
That sort of thing.
I guess what I want is EVE but with single characters in a persistant fantasy or cyberpunk world that we create as we go along.
What is truly sad though is that, as already stated, no one big is attempting to innovate the MMORPG genre. We are not even close to achieving what some consider to be the true aim of the MMORPG genre, the creation of a genuine virtual world. What I really want to see as the next big step is a world that is A: A complete world including normal people, homes, industries and trade (none of which truly appear in WoW, for example) and B: Some measure of dynamism and change in the world. The possibility for players to make a difference.
I sometimes compare playing World of Warcraft, or any mainstream MMO for that matter, to playing in a bouncy castle. You can throw yourself against the walls as much as you want, and you might have a lot of fun, but you can't make an impression on the castle. What I have in mind is more like a sandbox. You can't change the nature of the sand, it'll always still be sand, but you can make impressions in it.
I would like the following things to be possible within a future modern MMO:
Players helping create an alliance between their own faction and a NPC faction in the game.
Players killing a boss NPC, and that NPC actually disappearing from the game permanently and being replaced by a subordinate.
Players driving a hostile NPC faction from an area over a period of weeks or months.
Players scouting out resources in a wild area and helping a nearby NPC settlement start an industry there.
Players saving a friendly NPC from enemies that would otherwise have permanently died.
A town growing thanks to player effort in making the zone safer.
Players recieving unique randomly generated quests from NPC's.
I'll discuss how most of those could become a possibility later.
True no one wants to be a blacksmith when they can be carlos the dwarf who slays mighty dragons and rides mermaids by the seashore.
The multi lingual thing... Make the Korean gamers have their own land and own country with their own races etc... and when they cross the vast nothingness, we can't talk their language and they can't talk ours. Now that's some real roleplaying there. Is he friendly? Will he attack or trade some rare spice we DONT have in our lands .
MMOs is like star wars but everyone wants to be luke or vader. no one wants to be that little boxy robot thing that scurries in the background thru out the trilogy. We don't need Shenmue-like day jobs, but seriously being a bar keeper for someone who likes to chat would be awesome don't you think?
If there ever is an MMO like I envision I will volunteer to be the barkeep.
----oh and how do you get people to want to be the barkeep or the blacksmith?
I get this idea from watching the movie Monster Camp, you let those guys play free as long as they are serving up in-game story and life for the "heroes" to feed off of .
First off. All I could think of was Sam Kinason's "you see this... this is sand..." routine
You have great ideas by the way. One thing though... there is history of an event just like you describe above... when Lord Brittan died in Ultima Online due to a bug and the creator letting it go as in game cannon because it was so unexpected and really brilliant when you think about it since he died in front of just about anyone who was on line at the time.
Second Life is partly an interesting sandbox look at this.
But really, Nintendo could do this at any point but they are sooooo leery to allow freedom online because face it- we ALL become perverts and Nigerian scammers once we get online and talk to other people.
For an example, I'll use WoW which I played for several years. They might have enabled something similar to this by now; I haven't been following. Anyway, someplace like the Eastern Plaguelands which only had the one small town and quest hub. As players in a new server got to that zone and began completing quests, it could expand and grow to have new quests. The question would be, would that town ever "reboot" so that new players could experience the growth mechanic? It could be done once or twice; maybe there's a huge uprising of ghouls and the players all try to fend off the attacks. The better they do, the more of the town is saved. Of course there'd have to be a sort of "Master Recipient" NPC that could complete every quest in the town in the event that the original questgiver is killed and his home is burned down.
Some of those things have been done, though. The Ahn-Quiraj (or however it was spelled) quest had the entire server in a massive resource dump culminating in a huge, world-wide opening event with a one-time boss and an item that could only belong to one person in the entire server.
Or the second coming of Vanguard. Either would make me pretty pleased.
I think it's funny that you call for MMOG's to evolve and then hold up an old game (UO) as an example.
As others have said, today MMOG's require massive investments (money, people, hardware) to develop and then to keep them going. Investments that UO didn't have to deal with back in the day, at least not on that scale.
Maybe MMOG's have evolved, but not in the way you expect or would like.