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Choice
CommoX
Member UncommonPosts: 85
Choice: 1. The act of choosing - Merriam-Webster online dictionary.
TLDR - for the skimmers: MMORPG games lack choice, when a player loses the control of choice, they feel they have no control over their character and interest in playing wanes.
Choice is something a player has always enjoyed or been rewarded with in RPG stylized games. When you throw in the MMO portion of that, it just adds a plethora of more choices.
Currently in recent games, to cite a few from experience, there is an excruciating lack of choice in obvious places their should be.
Starting simple, we can look at character creation - We all know some want more, some want less, there is typically a slider too few or too many in every game. Character creation is the first basic choice we make as our avatars who will step into the world. While finding balance would be near impossible, having enough toggles would please everyone. Eve would be an example of a good character creating tool, and this is just from the looks stand point, they have quite a bit and it can be rather fun to create that particular look. On the other hand, more recent games like TERA or even WoW have a small preset from what you can build your baser likeness from. While these are varying end of the spectrum, someplace in the middle would be nice.
From there, we have stats - if a game deems to let you modify these and of course your beginner gear and class. I'm the kind of guy who has rolled a character roller for hours to get the stats I deem proper for where I'm going with the class. I would like some choice in this, but again, in some games that choice comes down to race, and what bonuses they entail. From this point I think the ability to at least choose through a varying set of starter gear wouldn't harm anyone, be a damned shame if we all looked superbly the same in the starting area.
When it comes to these choices, I've always personally wanted to see bags slung on shoulders, bedrolls on top, potions and coin pouches at belt and bandoleer. Clothing and armor that didn't look skin tight.
Once you get past this initial choice the game becomes more over a land of choices, you are in essence playing a role within the game, a character in a world, and you have choices to make, that in some way should effect the world, or at least locally what you have done.
An important choice to me are the rules governing alignment, everyone starts out fairly neutral, and we are given quests with choices, say this merchant needs you to go get his wagon of stuff back from some bandits. You encounter the bandits, find their cause just in some strange warm fuzzy way and side with them, choosing not to return the stuff (Done through a series of discussions/information delves/ in which at one point you could have chosen to get the item back from them in a number of ways (Choices!!) kill them, steal it, call the guards and assault them to gain the item), after thinking it over, you side with the bandits. This should shift your alignment a certain direction, and as that shifts, make you safe in some places, and dangerous in others. But this isn't the only choice. Say your a member of the Horde, and the undead to unspeakable things, and well, the horde removes them from the group, their faction splinters into a 3rd faction, if you agree with what they did you should have that choice to defect. Again, this goes for any and all factions, who says their has to be 2 or even 3 sides to a world. Imagine if in WoW or WAR it was a 6 way battle, we all know Dwarfs aren't fond of Elves as a prime example, while should either of them endure an alliance that benefits them in meager proportions, the fracture off, creating a 4th faction. Lets not end it here, you agree with the Undead, but you're not undead, perhaps during some of those cinematic stories your character made some Choices!! He agreed with the technique and sees how this can benefit his future, that earns him reputation and alignment towards his chosen faction.
Take for example: With the upcoming War in WoW that have taken a lot of player choice away, what if some people felt Garrosh was doing his best, bringing the horde/orcs in line with their roots, should that not have that choices to stay and fight for this leader? Why do we not get a choice in this major change. I thought the MMORPG was the story of us, and our choices in that world?
Of course, there are consequences to made choices, and by no means should these be absent. While the bandits stole what they needed to feed their families, you sided with them, you are a bandit now too, and much of your dealings will be with their kind, as the law abiding world would attempt to harness your evil ways if they were to recognize you.
Faction hoping would be an issue as well, but I feel alignment and player choice may keep that in check. Your alignment based on your actions throughout quests and other deeds keeps you locked into where you are, burn those bridges and you enter a grey area with neither side trusts you, and rebuilding trust is no joke.
To wrap it up in a less than elegant way, the MMORPG genre appears to have done what they could to remove choice. Choice would make player impact matter, even if it is only at the player level. Returning choice to the player I feel would greatly improve this worlds in which we choose to reside in.
I would like the seed of Choice to be something that is planted and grown in CU, this, while not in the exact form as above, would keep the game interesting, as we would feel our choices matter, and one isn't prone to clicking through everything and following a happy trail to loot and glory land.
Comments
I am all for choice with a few exceptions, but the choice that really matters is effecting the game world. The problem is that so many people complain that when a players choice makes him successful. They will often call successful choices, exploits. We need game makers to reward success instead of treating them as cheaters. A game made with real choice, will always be more than the sum of its parts. The problem with every mmo we have played so far is there is no real reward for choice, and the sum is less than the sum of its parts.
there is a game that is greater than the sum of its parts btw, its called minecraft.
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I think you may have hit it on the head, back then we all weren't heroes we were just somebody else on the line. Somewhere it changed from the story of the character making their way in the world to the character is one of the revolving factors of the world.
While I do hope CU is wrapped in RVR awesomeness, choice is still an important venue, and I'm not talking about choosing the color of your cloak. If of choices were made more substantial, in a way I cannot currently explain I think we would see a resurgence of realm/server/guild/team/squad individual pride.
IF this was implemented in a pure fashion we could, say, be reduced to our choice or red/blue/green but still feel as if our choice mattered.
This is really the problem with the modern "themepark" heavy MMO's. The writers have a specific story they want to tell you and your character is the hero of it.
They forget that games are an interactive medium, and MMO's are doubly interactive because you are interacting with other players as well. They seem to think they are writing a movie instead, so the games end up being movies, eliminating all but the most superficial of choices to make sure they can railroad you to the next required plot point.
That all said, I dont think we have anything to be concerned about on this front with CU. It looks like we'll be getting a well needed return to the "here is the world, go find your own way in it" style of MMO's.
I beg to differ in terms of DAoC. DAoC was a world of the players. It imitated the real world a little bit where some people got more involved than others and emerged as faction leaders or as subfaction leaders. These guys coordinated relict raids or relict defenses, AMG and tower defenses. Heck, you even had a phone warning system in place when someone saw a relict raid coming. The point I am making is that DAoC somehow enabled people to make a difference, if they put the time in it. In other ways, it even forced people to communicated and to form a community.
Beside the mentioned RvR aspects, you simply needed a group to level up. A damage dealer had huge down times after fighting a yellow or orange mob, a healer could only fight blue mobs but could do so without downtimes. Only when people formed a group, they were able to effectively level up. Btw, this was lost with WoW. Wow saw this "downtime" as a problem and introduced magic water to the game to allow anyone to level up on their own.