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Why dont most MMOs allow players to play "monster races"?
Question2
Member UncommonPosts: 43
Look at pretty much every MMO out there. Maybe 95% or more are simply human/elves/dwarves and the standard fanstasy races. Cyborgs/Robots of some kind, sure. Some MMOs have beastfolk races. Yet, pretty much no MMO will let you play traditional monster races like undead. The ones that do basically turn them into a race that plays "pretty much like humans except you are technically undead". WoW comes to mind for this. Beastfolk races where you play as a human with fur also annoy me.
It just seems like a really unexplored niche. Im sure there are no shortage of players who would love to play an actual vampire, think something along the lines of what the world of darkness MMO would have been like before CCP's incompetence killed it (just read up on that story if you want to know what poor project management is). Humans/Elves/Dwarves have been way overdone and I cant remember the last time I saw an actual creative attempt at them.
You don't need to make quest lines involving killing helpless women and children anymore than you need to make quests involving killing helpless orc babies. I mean, look at the city of heroes villains expansions, you had the chance to play a villain but it wasnt about recreating hitler or anything over the top stupid. With city of heroes, you had the chance to play the stereotypical hero but the expansion also let people play the "bad guys" which almost never happens. There was an obvious niche there which they exploited.
But with most MMOs its just the standard fantasy races fighting some ancient evil (or each other). I cant think of any where you actually get to play the monsters instead of "humans who are evil" or "humans who are evil and with green skin". Why is nobody exploiting this niche?
I'm specifically excluding simple text based MUDs, RPG maker, etc from this. Think of something at least on the scale of something like BDO, Tera, Aion, etc.
It just seems like a really unexplored niche. Im sure there are no shortage of players who would love to play an actual vampire, think something along the lines of what the world of darkness MMO would have been like before CCP's incompetence killed it (just read up on that story if you want to know what poor project management is). Humans/Elves/Dwarves have been way overdone and I cant remember the last time I saw an actual creative attempt at them.
You don't need to make quest lines involving killing helpless women and children anymore than you need to make quests involving killing helpless orc babies. I mean, look at the city of heroes villains expansions, you had the chance to play a villain but it wasnt about recreating hitler or anything over the top stupid. With city of heroes, you had the chance to play the stereotypical hero but the expansion also let people play the "bad guys" which almost never happens. There was an obvious niche there which they exploited.
But with most MMOs its just the standard fantasy races fighting some ancient evil (or each other). I cant think of any where you actually get to play the monsters instead of "humans who are evil" or "humans who are evil and with green skin". Why is nobody exploiting this niche?
I'm specifically excluding simple text based MUDs, RPG maker, etc from this. Think of something at least on the scale of something like BDO, Tera, Aion, etc.
Comments
First of all i have experienced every type of game design out there,i have seen how gamer's play these games and there is definitely a common trend in every game.
Now that i got that out of the way,i can tell you that such a game exists,players don't care.They see an early gimmick but if there is not some shiny rewards at the end of the rainbow,nobody cares.So the problem is not always the developer,it is usually the gamer's.
Too many players are NOT mmorpg gamer's,they want some superficial game that has nothing to do with role playing nor an MMO environment and immersion,they seem to not care one bit.
What is that trend?RACING to end level,then expecting Raids to attain the best gear,99% of the players couldn't care less about anything else.Then what happens is if the developer sees that nobody cares,they stop developing good content ideas.
Pancrase:a cool design that allows players to capture creatures in the world and use them to fight in an arena,nobody cares.
Play as the mobs?Yep and with a decent in depth design,nobody cares.They are all off running end game stuff going for that best gear,they couldn't care less about immersion or a role playing game.
Moblin maze mongers:a System whereby you can design the dungeon to some extent,it even has some rewards in the system,but guess what ,nobody cares because the end game gear is still the most desirable option.
So why would a developer waste time and resources to create lots of content and systems if all players care about is Raiding for end game loot?It is all about profits so if the majority are shallow minded gamer's ,this si exactly what we will keep getting.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Humans, dwarves and elves are almost never enemies in MMOs, so from a design standpoint, making them playable doesn't remove any future content opportunities.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
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Though there is one game with a good variety of non human player characters.......butthen again, they had the budget.
Pretty much the whole Horde line up is made of "Monster" Races (apart for the Blood Elves).
Maybe that's another reason why WoW is/was so popular.
I certainly was an Horde man, never played Alliance.
I liked the laugh (Evil laugh) and air guitar dance of the undead.
I don't see 4 legs, Winged race that can fly or anything that makes any race different from the next in WoW. Every race, is two legs, two eyes so on.. They bend the legs and add at tail.
....Being Banned from MMORPG's forums since 2010, for Trolling the Trolls!!!
The problem with a large area of ground contact is that it's much harder to make that contact occur near what looks like the surface of the ground. This becomes a problem on rugged or sloped terrain, as the simplest way to animate creatures is to allow feet to either dangle in the air or poke into the ground. With a small convex hull of ground contact, feet either come close to the ground or go not very far into it. An eight-legged spider could easily have two feet poke so far into the ground that the knees are underground, while two other feet don't come come within a foot (as in 12 inches) of the ground.
You might think that's a big problem with monsters that you fight against, too, but that's much easier to mitigate. Awkward to animate races can be arbitrarily set to only exist in portions of the game world where the ground is fairly flat, so that it doesn't get too bad. Fish that swim underwater can exist only underwater, and then how they'd flop around if on land is irrelevant. Players have to be able to go everywhere, and so playable races have to look decent everywhere.
Gaming since 1985; Online gaming since 1995; No End in Sight! My YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8POVoJ8fdOseuJ4U1ZX-oA
I actually wonder how this might effect Pantheon with their gnomes which wear a mask. I suppose they will make it so you can customize your mask, but I'm afraid they are going to have a tough time allowing players to make them look unique.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Not only that, but then it needs to be animated, rigged, textured, etc.
Spiders (with tiny spider offsprings), wargs, orcs and Uruk-hai orcs, all with plenty of cosmetic options - sure you could still say the animation is choppy... :winky: Plus the time-limited troll play as well, as Rhoklaw said.
I don't know from where you got that, CoV was really popular and if you look at favourite classes threads, Mastermind is almost always listed as one... And if you check the next Cryptic game (CO), it has even more "monster" options than LotRO, you can play anything from fishes to furries or robots or zombies or rodents or anything you can imagine. True, in CO's case Quizz's above mentioned theory is mostly fitting, you can't really differ from the 2 legs / 2 arms schematics, but you can miss one limb (or even the head
And since CO has one of the most robust cosmetic systems out there, you can easily rule out the "would be hard to render the different cosmetics" theory. It can be done, if devs want it (or if their game is nicknamed as Costumes Online
I guess you're lucky enough for missing the (ill) chance of logging in into SL?
MurderHerd
And yeah, games with many weirder models have far less clothes and armors, look on EQ2. You can indeed play trolls and ogres there but most armors are the same with different colors, almost all mages wear the same pants robe.
In EQ1 for a time you could play as a mob, i had fun playing a wolf in the game, but it was something of a gimmick and your 'monster' play was over if you died, and i don't think they levelled up either.
MMO's have allowed players to choose 'monster' races for years, at least insofar as they fit within the lore of the game.