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Do we really want a boundless, freee roaming MMORPG or do we just need something NEW and FUN?
Domenicus
Member UncommonPosts: 290
I answered a topic in other place, but now I thnk we would discuss it, more deeply in here, so I could not diverge of the root of the discussion at hand in the other forum...
The thing is, for many, many years I just dreamed with a world to live and play, player driven economy, free PvP and without even quests.. We would build our world.. The devs would just put the scenarios and tools for us... Today I firmly believe that this would ruin the very idea of MMORPG... And thats because of... US... The MMORPG veterans who lost the capacity to wonder with this genre of gaming... I will explain it now and would like to know what do you think about it... Please, keep in mind that I am not totally sure of what I am saying here.. Its is my idea at the MOMENT...
I do think that the MMORPG community have evolved to something different, leaving their ´dream of RPG´ and naive ways behind... Today everyone is looking for the soft spot on any MMO, the way to level faster, to explore PvP weakness of the system... Everyone, after so many years of the same thing, same grind, same combat just wanna pass this part.. Do not want to explore, to wonder and marvel with the world itself, faking that we are on a magical and mysterious world... The old school knows all the tricks, from lolcopterism to fast grinding... The community, with a free world to roam would transform it in something like a theme park guided by the ´sage old school´ (i.e. ´Do you wanna to kill X? Dont use this weapon, use this in this postion and with this ammo, jumping when shooting, you always make triple damage´- ´Do not go to area Y, the area X is better because you will have a more time x XP rate from hour´)... They would hastly discover a way to spoil it and transform it on a FPS, like Half-Life 2... On DFO, for example, they ask ´why home?´ - and if the answer is not something to give them a advantage on PvP, it doesnt matter... Even on SWG Pre-CUthey were building cities with houses on a defensive form, to make it easier to defend... (the housing was no more some spice to RP or to the world itself,but one more way to exploit the game)...
We would have to bring back the naive MMORPG, something completly new that would dazzle the old school vet, that they would take a few years before starting to spoil it...
Comments
I think I get what you are saying in regards to the veteran MMO players getting sick of the standard MMO's and how they've changed there playstyles as a result and that sandbox games aren't a viable alternative.
The older MMO's did have an advantage of being something new. As time goes on people get tired of the same gameplay. That said however games like WOW attracted new blood and it would have been new to many. Even now there is still alot of people who haven't played MMO's at all or for very long which is maybe why we still see the same fundemental gameplay in todays MMO's. So while I'm all for something "new and fun" todays MMO's are still "new and fun" for alot of people (and unfortunately not all of them are new to the genre). I guess what I am saying is there is still a huge demand for the current type of MMO and still an untapped market of potential MMO players who such games would already be "new and fun" for. I think you are also right in that so called sandbox games have the same problem attached with them (in that they too have been done before too) in addittion to the fact that they don't seem to attract as much new blood.
Not because they are sandbox, but because the implementation is underfunded or crappy. Polish and implementation are everything, almost.
I want a boundless free roaming mmorpg not a game I'm going to throw out in a month.
Maybe. I used to have the same opinion. I had that opinion because of my personal preference (I prefer sandbox to themepark games) and it is easier to imagine people enjoying the same things as you, because you understand why you enjoy them than it is to understand why someone enjoys something you dislike. Atleast that was the reason I used to have the same opinion.
I have my doubts now though. As someone who plays games fairly intensely I think it's just as plausible that because themepark games (by definition) guide the player through the game that they are far more casual friendly than sandbox games.
.
I think a few different things are needed. Though some of the things may not appeal to some people, im just speaking in terms of MMOs in general, and of course they dont all apply to every game/type.
1) At least partial Sandbox even within Themepark games - players need to have some freedom and the ability to make their own choices, as well as have some impact to the world around them This doesnt really have to be some world changing drastic effect, or even permanent, but at least something temporary & in the immediate area/zone that actually feels like youve accomplished something useful. This can be easily done by having basically side-sandbox content, which doesnt impact the main storyline/content, but allows you to break away from the main line and have some fun on the side.
2) Dynamic content - GW2 is a great example of this, though it doesnt even need to be on as a large of a scale as it. Even if it is limited to just dungeons/instances while the outside world remains static. We need things to change, at least slightly. Changing the layouts of dungeons, mob spawn points as well as types/number of mobs (and adding unique/elite mobs at random, similar to Diablo 2) goes a long long way towards increasing replay value and eliminating that repetitive "oh yay, my 2000th time running Instance X, im so bored" feeling
3) Eliminate the holy trinity archetypes - allow players to create characters that are not so race/class/role locked, make them more self sufficient and adaptable. This is another thing GW2 is trying to do a better job with, and a lot of devs should take notice of it and do the same. Stop designing classes the way you design AI Mobs. AI mobs have to be programmed and scripted to do 1, or a limited few things. Us players are thinking, living, reacting things, just like our characters would be if that world were real, and IRL people are not mindless fools who are only capable of performing 1 role and are clueless of everything else. We observe & learn other actions around us, and while we may not be adept in a skill, we do at least understand how it works and can perform basic functions in many roles.
Ill use Tanks as an example for this. A Tank is usually something like a heavily armored knight type character. Would a real knight only be capable of say, standing there taking hits to their shield and generally being otherwise useless? No, they know how to use their weapons effectively for killing as well. And theres no reason a knight wouldnt be able to do something like say learn a little bit about the art of using tools of the rogue/assassin trade (poisons, traps, etc) to kill more effectively, just like a real person would say "hey, i can kill people with my sword if i cut em deep enough, but if i coat it with poison, i can kill em even easier" and would then go about learning how to do it. Basically im saying, make our characters more like living beings that can learn, rather than being set in stone what youre capable of doing.
4) Innovate controls & UIs - This, I think is one of the most important. PC gamers have been playing practically the same way for a long long long time, with no real change to the way we control our characters and perform actions ingame. Its almost as if someone years ago decided "MMORPGs must be designed around THIS control design or you will die on the spot". Consoles have changed quite a bit from their original counterparts over the decades and have come up with new ways of controlling your characters (such as adding axis & joystick control, motion, etc), but yet MMORPGs remain the same. I would like to see companies design some truly new ways of controlling things, rather than just rearranging a keyboard to fit more nicely to our hands or what have you.
That doesnt apply to just changing the hardware (keyboard and mouse) either. Even if those do remain the same, there is sooooo much more that can be done with them, but the options are simply not used. Why not take full control of things with your mouse and make MMOs truly interactive, rather than the mouse being used as a targeting and/or moving device. Why not use the full range of motion of the mouse in things like crafting? Or even in combat, doing things such as having to actually actively move your mouse in certain patterns to have certain effects or trigger certain skills instead of everything being done through hotkeys? Its not as if the mouse is some brand new peripheral to PCs that they havent quite figured out and made mainstream yet. Making our controls more engaging & interactive will make things much more exciting then pressing a few of the same keys over and over again.
Ain't gonna happen, "dazzle" has just never been on my list of features. I want complexity, in ways that the above Pen and ale reflected on in part.
If I wanted "dazzle" I'd play CRPG's... though that is what has been becoming of mmorpg's as if they could merge, but they cant. For those that like those games, fine, but not all games need to become like that, it's not some new generation, just a mixture of old stale CRPG. MMO's should look back to MUD's as they came from them, and are being left more feature rich as they continue to develop improvements, yet while mmo's become more like CRPG's which have been stagnant for a very long time. Flash and dazzle is way over rated, flavor of the moment.
Tip: make sentence blocks/paragraphs between 7-9 lines, 10-20 is considered a screaming chunk of unreadable block text. Missed some of what you posted.
M59, UO, EQ1, WWIIOL, PS, EnB, SL, SWG. MoM, EQ2, AO, SB, CoH, LOTRO, WoW, DDO+ f2p's, Demos & indie alpha's.
So it really comes down to human nature and exploits. For me , playing a game ( mmorpg) I want to have an advantage, because god knows, the other guy is going to do the same. That and I don't want to let my guild mates down by being weak.
However, when I play a single player ( Fallout 3 for example) I will just take in the sights and explore while listening to the radio. Even admire a few sunsets or two.
But back to the point, It's just far to competitive to just sit back and smell the roses..For me anyway.
So, mabye "guilds" spoil the laid back atmosphere you try to describe. That and those pesky sob gankers..(guilty)
"New" is new for only about a month. "Fun" is subjective.
A properly made sandbox could be both "new" and "fun". But honestly, it can't be just a gameworld with nothing to do but craft and PVP.
Been there. Done that.
The difference, and where the breakdown is in almost every argument about mmo gameplay dynamics is this:
Do you want the mmo to provide you with the environment/dynamics to create your own fun with the other people in the game world;
or
Do you want the mmo to deliver the fun to you.
The mmo as fun delivery system is currently in the ascendent.
it's a curiously popular misconception that these content delivery techniques must be mutually exclusive.
Hah yeah who needs a dynamic world with player cities, elected mayors, crafting, hirelings, events with armies of mobs attacking player cities, player/guild castles to siege, forests you can plant, farms you can own, digging mines with terrain deformity, fishing, treasure-hunting, taming wild mounts, player owned ships, player made quests, etc etc etc… No we need what’s popularly-fun as where the curious hoard is, like Diablo1 but where you can log your toon into a congested non-combat area, then repeat instances until we have multiple copies of the best gear in the game, that’s FUN! We‘ll call it World of Diablo’s StarCraft. Sweet innovation… something never-ever done before, well at least not in the past month and a half... As long as every game is just like that, then everyone has a choice.
M59, UO, EQ1, WWIIOL, PS, EnB, SL, SWG. MoM, EQ2, AO, SB, CoH, LOTRO, WoW, DDO+ f2p's, Demos & indie alpha's.
Your post confuses me. Considering that no one in this thread has made the slightest indication that they want the latter and that the OP made it clear that it would need to be "new" and something that would make vets feel like they hadn't in any other game I think you are way off topic.
It's not a themepark vs sandbox or a feature rich vs clone arguement. I think the OP was clearly refering to mould breaking change. Even the things you want (ignoring the sarcasm) aren't new ideas although it would be awesome if someone could put them all together well.
Not everybody thinks the same. For me, I really want that feeling. But you are corect, a lot of veterans and not so veterans will "spoil" the game for the rest of the players but, at the end is up to you to let this ones spoil the game for you.
I don't think it's extremes of either/or. Just like politics isn't either "accept complete socialist totalitarianism" or "complete anarchy."
I think what a lot of experienced players want is for the devs to take their hands off the steering wheel a bit and allow folks to exlpore and enjoy the gameworld without being herded down a fixed path and forced to endure canned cutscenes. They just need to add a bit more freedom to MMO's.
Fun is the key element to any game, but fun is also very subjective.
MMORPGs are tasked with the often impossible task of prolonging fun over months/years.
So you can either:
A) create massive games with a good spread of different types of fun for many different types of players, taking years and years to develop and costing tens (if not hundreds) of millions of dollars.
Problem recently is that we've had a LOT of A's and most of which haven't been "fun" enough to make up for their long-delayed production times and massive budgets.
We've also had a few B's but they have been made by under-talented development studios that haven't been able to find the fun either.
So we either need lightning to strike again and give us another good A (wow), or lightning to strike again and give us another long lasting and appealing B (eve)
That was part of the point, it does not need to be new to be fun, but then when ever have you dug your own mine (or written your own quests)? I did throw something new in as an example of what the open world is capable of. There are features in open world that just cant be done in the "new" linear style of mmo's. A mine that you can dig and build becomes static in the world, after the owner logs off it remains and other players or friends pass by or even enter... or claim jump having to deal with hireling guards if need be.
They are worlds not meant to be sterol environments, but social encounters with people rather than computer generated artificial inelegance, which due to server resource management can not be very inelegant. Vets don't ruin the fun however the OP put it, without Vet's changing the environment, the content, the economy, the entire structure of the game, well it's then just another CRPG that you instance on your computer when you click the shortcut. The new style is just not fun, it negates the social structure of mmorp gaming, turns it into like a social dance scene.
M59, UO, EQ1, WWIIOL, PS, EnB, SL, SWG. MoM, EQ2, AO, SB, CoH, LOTRO, WoW, DDO+ f2p's, Demos & indie alpha's.
Go on
There's no reason at all why a game can't deliver BOTH of these things.
And I think we may see that illustrated quite nicely in an upcoming MMORPG title, in fact. The perfect melding of a sandbox game world, including tools for players to generate their own content, with plenty of pre-designed content to enjoy besides.
The "perfect" game isn't a sandbox, or a themepark....it's a combination of both.
both
Boundless? Not necessarily, you need some scope for the game, otherwise it would get unwieldly large, complicated, and not do anything in particular well.
I would like a game where there is a wide open world to explore, conquer, and build upon. Basically where the game world is dynamic enough that player's actions have lasting impacts, and change enough where exploring the same area sometime later actually has noticeable differences in it.
I've done the level and quest treadmills of other MMOs. They're not fulfilling. They're downright boring once you come to the realization that what's the "top" today, is going to be irrelevant "tommorow". The same old instanced crap in the same old never changing dungeon, with the only thing offering a "challenge" is the boss fights with ever frustratingly difficult mechanics tacked onto them.
The thing I want to do most in an MMO, that I have for a very long time, is to be able to go out deep into the wilderness with my friends, clear out many of the monsters the threaten the area, and then build our own town there. Actually being able to influence the spawns of mobs in an area. Actually being able to clear out trees and brush and build over the terrain to create a new part of the game world. There is no MMO that offers this to decent level.
The closest that this did exist was in UO and SWG, and these are both quite old, the former much more so. When I did get to somewhat do that I had a blast, and yet I can't even do anything close to this in any recent MMO. Most MMOs today are about being placed on the endless treadmill, masked by poorly written lore through reptative and boring quests and one dimensional NPCs.
For me, the "fun" part is directly tied to having a dynamic, expansive, and open gameworld that I can explore and influence. As such, I can say without doubt that I do not want yet another static MMO.
They may "generate" it, but it's not persistent. There is just no way to meld both together. The point of themeparks are to push you through a path of content, leaving the old behind, and get players into instances so the company gets a huge break on bandwidth requirements. Sandbox is completely opposite. It's like trying to hammer a square block through a round hole, you just get broken pieces. You can't even craft an elaborate design document with it, it would make no sense. Players spend time making content in persistent worlds, as doing so in an instance is a waste of time. There have been such games, socials that you build your own instanced rooms, complete fails.
Finally, there is no perfect game, only good ones and bad. This is why it's good to not try to make them all the same as if there is one perfect generational formula, diversity is what drives people to sub to more than one at a time. So you have good theme parks and good sandbox games, but making one huge monstrosity as if everyone would play is just a fail.
M59, UO, EQ1, WWIIOL, PS, EnB, SL, SWG. MoM, EQ2, AO, SB, CoH, LOTRO, WoW, DDO+ f2p's, Demos & indie alpha's.
Fair enough.
As for digging my own mine I've done that plenty of times in wurm online. As for writting my own quest it's not something I have done in a game but I'm sure I've heard the idea somewhere before and I have played games with player driven quest which is just a step away.
To me "boundless" means FFApvp and thats shit blows so no i dont.
I already have a fun game to play i just want more of them.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
I do like some theme park games, GW is one. I'm not sure about GW2 though, I'd rather they stick to the hardcore theme park. And I like sandbox games, pure ones with little or no instancing. So I'm not trying to be biased to one over the other, though I like sandbox best, but it's good to have games like GW to change pace as I usually play more than one game at a time.
Never played Wurm, not sure how elaborate mining is. Oh, I bet they use blitz3D terrains, yes that has basic deformity. I haven’t seen anything as far as really advance deformity for a terrain system, not yet at least, and I've used many terrain editors, even make really good looking terrain textures for some. If anyone does anything advanced with that, it'd probably be a sandbox game, apart form theme parks where you could make craters from explosives.
The only thing close to player driven quests I've seen (apart from a couple in SecondLife) is in UO with the bartender hireling. You could give them a rumor that players could tip for. I always wanted to see something far more advanced to be done with that in some game. Like guild owned questing npc's and the ability to dump quest rewards on the NPC to give out like player crafted items when the quest is completed.
M59, UO, EQ1, WWIIOL, PS, EnB, SL, SWG. MoM, EQ2, AO, SB, CoH, LOTRO, WoW, DDO+ f2p's, Demos & indie alpha's.