A different way to portray and use quests in a mmorpg?

[HRose]

I typed this as a reply to this other thread but decided to branch it to not troll/derail the thread about LOTRO.

Originally Posted by theblackw0lf

I just want to play a MMORPG that has dialog trees for the NPCs.

You aren't alone. (click the linkie to win a Koontz quote! You know you want it!)

1- Transform passive, 'extra' text as *subject* of the gameplay and not as just an inflated backdrop that the players would rather skip so they can go back at "playing the game"

2- Recover the interest and fun in "reading", bringing back that special flavor from the old RPGs that seems now lost for good

3- Detach the "functional" purpose of the questing from being just an artificial excuse to add some bland variation to grindy treadmills and level-up mechanics

4- Reward those players that read and 'explore' actively the game this way

That I tried to deliver and concretize with this suggested list of "no more"s:

- No more advancement through quests, all the player's skills should increase through a natural use and new skills and powers should be learned through realistic means such as: discovery, exploration, training etc... Everything happening "in" the game, meaning not directly directly spawned by a non-immersive element, like the UI itself, a "ding. grats!" or another abstract game mechanic.

- Quests or "journeys" (a "journey" is a chain of quests) to learn new spells, acquire new powers, discover other zones, find your way through the world, learn about it.

- No more logbooks or journals, no objectives, no exclamation marks hovering NPC heads, no coordinates or waypoints. No abstract mechanics such as "quest levels" to deliver content.

- Dialogues with NPCs made through branching trees and multiple choices. No more one-way text. No optional, "filler" text.

- Different NPCs all talking and offering more informations about the same quest paths. No more isolated quests and unconnected, oblivious NPCs. No NPCs standing one next to the other and knowing nothing about each other.

- No more NPCs sitting in one place and waiting to be clicked-on like cheese dispenser. Every NPC should have and follow a simple schedule. The NPCs should go sleep at their homes during the night and their existence in the world should be always "motivated". No more just a "service" for the player or for a strictly artificial purpose. The NPCs should be there for their own life and motivations, not just for you. You are there to learn about them, discover their world, not just to use everything as your own tool. The world is the pivot, not you.

- The PvE areas and instances should have no maps (possibly with the exclusion of in-game drawings manipulable by the character). No more radars, or on-screen compass. If you have a compass or a map, it's an item in the game, used by your character.

- More quests should have the purpose to grant access to new areas and develop the story. So questing should be mandatory to progress in PvE. All the areas and the instances should exist with the only purpose of enacting stories and immerse the player.

(dated December 2005)

[mlatin]

Does "Armchair Game Designer" pay very well, I wonder?

[Hans Lauring]

Originally Posted by mlatin

Does "Armchair Game Designer" pay very well, I wonder?

As much as Armchair Quarterback, but with fewer physical requirements...

[Flowers]

Roughing the dreamer after the post, ten yard penalty.

[SpoofyChop]

HRose everything you're suggesting is objectively great...for single player CRPGs. And in fact several of them have had just the features you're describing. In a single player game devs have the ability to add these features (albeit with some additional time and effort) without affecting the fun factor. I think the burden is on you to demonstrate that these features would make an MMORPG better.

I think that WoW, especially BC, actually has some of the features you're looking for (the ones that don't decrease the fun factor that is). I was leveling up a lvl 12 Human Mage in Azuremist and I noticed that the quests featured much more interesting storytelling than I remembered. Obviously there's still exclamation points but I don't want to have to spend hours talking to every single NPC in the game just to see whether they have something for me to do the way I would in Oblivion or Gothic.

The suggestions you are making would be certain to make the game take longer and be less fun. The vast majority of people out there that are willing to play an MMO aren't interested in your "damn fool crusade" to make them more immersive. They've got two precious hours a night to play WoW before they have to go to sleep so they can wake up and go to a cubicle again so they don't want to spend a lot of time having over-complicated conversations about boring topics.

They've got wives for that.

;)

[Charles]

Originally Posted by HRose

That I tried to deliver and concretize with this suggested list of "no more"s:

(dated December 2005)

Well, congratulations on creating the world's most tedious and frustrating MMORPG, I guess.

The only way to make an MMO more immersive is to make it dynamic (no more timmy falls down the well for every single player), or allow the players to drive the world, a la Eve. What you've outlined is a straight up single player RPG that would be very little fun when playing in a static world with thousands of other people.

[roguefrog]

Perma death, item stealing, capturable towns, no 100% safe-zones, world altering events...

Put the FEAR back into MMOs.

[Charles]

Originally Posted by roguefrog

Perma death, item stealing, capturable towns, no 100% safe-zones, world altering events...

Put the FEAR back into MMOs.

I don't agree with perma death (in practice you can't rely on it due to things like lag and disconnects), but everything else is a must have, and thankfully, it's all in Eve! Well, maybe not world altering events as planned, but player wars are essentially the same thing.

[Matt Perkins]

Originally Posted by HRose

- No more advancement through quests, all the player's skills should increase through a natural use and new skills and powers should be learned through realistic means such as: discovery, exploration, training etc... Everything happening "in" the game, meaning not directly directly spawned by a non-immersive element, like the UI itself, a "ding. grats!" or another abstract game mechanic.

What kind of game mechanic is this? What does that mean, no more advancement through quests? You mean no skill gains through quests? So killing 10 of X is still cool as long as we don't talent/skill/etc rewards for them?

- Quests or "journeys" (a "journey" is a chain of quests) to learn new spells, acquire new powers, discover other zones, find your way through the world, learn about it.

You don't think WoW does this now? At the very least for the first 20-30 levels, it leads on to the next area when you're ready to move on. WoW does that really well.

- No more logbooks or journals, no objectives, no exclamation marks hovering NPC heads, no coordinates or waypoints. No abstract mechanics such as "quest levels" to deliver content.

I was thinking MMOs are just too easy. I definitely want to make each quest as annoying as possible.

This is an MMO. Each and every quest will be documented online with weeks of them existing, if not sooner. This only makes it harder in game...which is kinda of the opposite of fun.

- Dialogues with NPCs made through branching trees and multiple choices. No more one-way text. No optional, "filler" text.

I'm not against this, but MMOs designed as single player games will become tedious real fast. MMORPG != CRPG. They can't be. You can learn from the CRPG, but you can't just copy it.

- Different NPCs all talking and offering more informations about the same quest paths. No more isolated quests and unconnected, oblivious NPCs. No NPCs standing one next to the other and knowing nothing about each other.

This is a nice idea, but even in CRPGs this doesn't happen a lot. It's a lot of work. I'm all for it, but it's a lot work, especially the bigger the amount of NPCs.

- No more NPCs sitting in one place and waiting to be clicked-on like cheese dispenser. Every NPC should have and follow a simple schedule. The NPCs should go sleep at their homes during the night and their existence in the world should be always "motivated". No more just a "service" for the player or for a strictly artificial purpose. The NPCs should be there for their own life and motivations, not just for you. You are there to learn about them, discover their world, not just to use everything as your own tool. The world is the pivot, not you.

Again, this is a CRPG mechanic. How is this going to work for people playing that can only get together at 8pm EST every night to play with their group? They can't do a quest because they only time they can all play together is not at the same time the NPCs are awake? This just doesn't carry over well.

I get what you're trying to say here. Make the world alive, make it not seem so static and baren. I get that, and I I'm all for it, but this particular idea isn't going to work out I'm thinking.

- The PvE areas and instances should have no maps (possibly with the exclusion of in-game drawings manipulable by the character). No more radars, or on-screen compass. If you have a compass or a map, it's an item in the game, used by your character.

Oh yeah, please make finding things as absolutely hard as possible. I love being frustrated by the little things in my MMO. Remember EQ? Remember how often you had to hit Sense Direction to even know which way of North? That wasn't awesome (I'm lying).

- More quests should have the purpose to grant access to new areas and develop the story. So questing should be mandatory to progress in PvE. All the areas and the instances should exist with the only purpose of enacting stories and immerse the player.

This is a nice idea, but give some mechanics that include everyone involved without everyone walking all over each other doing the same quests, having something happen to the world for one player, but not for the others, and keep this a MMO?

(dated December 2005)

Heh, nice date mark. :P


Overall, I think these are weird complaints. What's the focus? Some of them seem aimed to get the player more involved in the world at the expense of ease of use, but others seem aimed frustrate as much as possible.


MMORPG aren't CRPGs. That's the big point I think your over looking. I know you want more CRPG in your MMORPG and while I agree with that in theory, I don't think just adding in CRPG mechanics wholesale is going to solve anything.

[Myth]

I think mmogs in general are becoming too much like their crpg brethren. I don't think more convoluted quest trees are necesserily the answer. My dream mmo would have virtual theatre like the dynamic campaign in Falcon 4 in a fantasy setting. The AI would prosecute it's war over the land and quests and missions would be dynamically generated according to need: Defend this village, supply this village, attack this enemy encampment, etc, etc. Battles and other disruptions would cause various fauna <read RATS and monsters> to be displaced and emerge where they are not wanted.

Have crafting 'missions'; to help supply the war effort and you pretty much have all the mmo bases covered. Throw in your pavlovian trinkets like gear and other shiny stuff, have rankings to strive for and you're all set.

Dynamic campaigns in simulation games have been around forever, so at least to me it is suprising that a genre that is supposed to be represent 'virtual' worlds ends up being so predictable and painfully static.

I'm sure it's a lot harder though than it sounds. ;-)

[Charles]

Originally Posted by Myth

I'm sure it's a lot harder though than it sounds. ;-)

It's hard simply because the balance in a dynamic and living system like that needs to be tweaked over a long period of simulation, and it also has to be able to dynamically compensate for player actions.

The biggest issue is less about difficulty and more about the computing requirements. You'd want humongous worlds, and that would require monster cpu, bandwidth, and ram.

[HRose]

Originally Posted by Charles

Well, congratulations on creating the world's most tedious and frustrating MMORPG, I guess.

Not really the intent.

Those bare quotes lack context but what I was proposing there wasn't to take WoW's questing system and remove all the "aid"s.

I know that they have a purpose, both for usability and accessibility. I wouldn't promote a game that takes back usability or accessibility, so I agree with those concerns about those points I quoted.

But my idea isn't that one. I had in mind a "paradigm shift", a different way to conceive quests and their purpose and use in the game. So whether you rely on waypoints and quests logs I was thinking to compensate that through more detailed dialogues and the possibility to question multiple NPCs about your task.

The idea is that you don't grab a quest and then left alone figuring it out, but you can dig it, ask around for more informations, ask for directions and so on.

The increased interaction and feedback was supposed to compensate the removal of artificial aids through more immersive mechanics.

The other point is that I wanted PvE to focus and pivot around the world, as an explorer, instead of pivoting just around your character, where the world is a passive tool for you to rack on power (see the original link where I analyze System Shock and Ultimas):

The PvP is about a game where the players make experience of each other and relate to each other. It's the social layer. The players are brought together, the collective effort. Something bigger is being built. It's the starting point for emergent content.

The PvE is about a game where the players make experience of the world and what it has to offer. Where you narrate a story to them and to that story they will belong. It's the journey toward something you do not expect, the exploration. It's about the surprise, the discovery, the fear. This is the roleplay where you impersonate the character and live a story with him.

My opinion is that in today's mmorpgs there's a lack of real "world" to explore. Things are designed as just player's tools.

And yes, the original title was "back to the roots". Because I think there's a lot we lost that I'm convinced is still valuable today, even in a mmorpg.

I'm not against other ideas about a dynamic world, but I clump that in PvP stuff, where dynamic content can deliver the most. That post instead was strictly about PvE.

[Alan Au]

So basically, you want a virtual environment unhampered by the ridiculous game mechanics used to satisfy the player desire for frequent rewards (usually gained by killing things). Ideally, actions would also have consequences and persistence.

Personally I'd like to see a MMOG based on a Thief or Operation Flashpoint system, where character "level" isn't important, and combat is a terrifying and dangerous affair.

- Alan

[Derek French]

Originally Posted by roguefrog

Perma death, item stealing, capturable towns, no 100% safe-zones, world altering events...

Put the FEAR back into MMOs.

And make sure the "Uninstall Game" button is very accessable.

[Derek French]

Originally Posted by HRose

- No more logbooks or journals,

This proved to be one of the single most annoying things about EQ1 as you could never figure out what you did last and weren't sure what to do next. What about if you are away from the game for a few weeks? Am I required to whip out pen and paper beside my computer in order to play this game?

- No more NPCs sitting in one place and waiting to be clicked-on like cheese dispenser. Every NPC should have and follow a simple schedule. The NPCs should go sleep at their homes during the night...

Which causes people on different schedules to get pissed off that they can't do anything because of their Real Life schedule doesn't match the game's schedule.

The NPCs should be there for their own life and motivations, not just for you. You are there to learn about them, discover their world, not just to use everything as your own tool. The world is the pivot, not you.

I am wondering what the dev cost would be to do this for about 10000 individual NPCs?

- The PvE areas and instances should have no maps (possibly with the exclusion of in-game drawings manipulable by the character). No more radars, or on-screen compass. If you have a compass or a map, it's an item in the game, used by your character.

No maps usually allows people to get very, very lost. And as soon as you allow the exclusion of player drawn maps, then everyone will just simply download all the good maps from the internet, defeating the purpose. This is what happened with EQ1, basically.

[HRose]

Originally Posted by Derek French

This proved to be one of the single most annoying things about EQ1 as you could never figure out what you did last and weren't sure what to do next. What about if you are away from the game for a few weeks? Am I required to whip out pen and paper beside my computer in order to play this game?

Those I listed are overall principles to try to achieve. If in the practice it's too hard to compensate them with immersive mechanics then there should be concessions.

I wouldn't be against an automated diary like in Baldur's Gate.

But the point here is that a quest log and a journal strictly define and encase the scope of a story, while I wanted to keep the interaction more blurred. Instead of a bunch of unconnected quests, the idea was to have "one" story that branches out in every direction. The story should form in the mind of the player, it should be emergent. Roleplay. Every dialog with every NPC should be part of the same picture, you don't just read dialogs and repeatedly press "next". But you converse with them, interact more deeply.

The idea is that one player who returns after a week, or a month, or more would get back into the game just by talking again with NPCs he meet. Conversations should compensate the lack of logs, give you back informations and all that.

If you can press "L" to check your quest log you can also go ask NPCs and have them refresh your mind.

Which causes people on different schedules to get pissed off that they can't do anything because of their Real Life schedule doesn't match the game's schedule.

This is one problem I listed in the original post, so I acknowledged it and have some ideas to solve it that still need work.

One is about making day cycles quicker, so that in a couple of hours you can get rid of the problem. But that's just a band-aid, not really satisfactory.

Another is to give players the possibility to "camp", sleep at a tavern and continue the day later. Impossible in a persistent world, but this kind of PvE drift I'm describing here was intended to be instanced ;)

I think this part need work, but I believe that good solutions can be found with enough brainstorming.

No maps usually allows people to get very, very lost. And as soon as you allow the exclusion of player drawn maps, then everyone will just simply download all the good maps from the internet, defeating the purpose. This is what happened with EQ1, basically.

I just wanted maps to be in-game objects. If there's a quest that looks frustrating to track the NPC could hand you a custom-made map.

Even here I believe that it's possible to use immersive means. It's just that designers haven't tried hard enough. Signposts, landmarks, roads, informations you can ask to NPCs...

I think it's possible if there's the desire to achieve it.

I don't know if it's clear enough, but my goal was to imagine something completely immersive. Take it like a challenge: design a game as immersive as possible, but without losing accessibility.

[Fugitive]

You want instances to be isolated enough to be temporally out-of-sync with the rest of the universe while still encompassing enough of the world to allow that freedom you want?

It sounds like you want NWN, not WoW.

[HRose]

Originally Posted by Fugitive

You want instances to be isolated enough to be temporally out-of-sync with the rest of the universe while still encompassing enough of the world to allow that freedom you want?

Well, instances are usually that isolated.

The concept I keep using is still the same, Michael Moorcock's Multiverse. So worlds and dimensions are encapsuled already. I was even imagining worlds where you become someone else, lose all your equipment and so on. You would never know what to expect.

[Derek French]

Thanks, HRose, that actually cleared up a few points for me.

[fuzzyslug]

Originally Posted by HRose

The increased interaction and feedback was supposed to compensate the removal of artificial aids through more immersive mechanics.

These aren't artificial aids, at least most of them aren't. If someone tells me something very important, I write it down. If I complete something on my todo list, I put a check next to it. These things aren't artificial. They are automated. There's a big difference. The latter is a very, very good thing.

I understand what you mean -- attempting to move the experience away from a rigid, artificial set of quests -- but adding confusion is probably not what you want. They are ways to extend/alter these tools to serve your desire a bit more.

Speaking of, not having a map sounds artificial to me. I can sit around for 5 minutes and realize I'm not the first person entering uncharted territory. Why the hell can't I get a map? I don't drive around Pennsylvania without a map. Why wouldn't I ask a vendor for a map? It would certainly be in demand. Wouldn't it be cool if you could buy them and, in some small ways, they were incorrect?

[Athryn]

Basically, most of the changes you're talking about are some of the many reasons I hated DAoC, and like World of Warcraft. It's like you want to take the progression and technology backwards, and not forwards.

[Lum]

So, it's possible to have interesting gameplay and storytelling while not actually ditching the UI advances of the past 10 years. My thoughts:

* Dialog trees are cool. I evangelize for them as well. The problem is that (a) they're exponentially more work, which is important when you have to develop the staggering amount of content required for an MMO and (b) they require a player to be engaged with the content, which not every player wishes to be.

* Automaps, quest tracking, etc: these things are requirements in today's market. A game that eschews them in the name of "immersion" is casting itself as a very niche game. A new player will ask, quite correctly, why they are not there.

* Trying to wedge a singleplayer game into an MMO context will not do well. World of Warcraft does it in the absolute best way possible, and it shows the limits of this approach pretty well.

* A hardcore PvP game like Eve will have its adherents, but it is absolutely not a mass market game. Not everyone wants to play a game in a Hobbesian all-against-all environment. That being said, not every game needs to be mass market in appeal, but using a boutique game like Eve - even one as successful as Eve is - is not really a good way to argue about where the MMO industry needs to go. Unless you believe every MMO should be a boutique game. Which is a valid argument!

* Arguing for permadeath is one of the quickest ways to advertise that you have no clue whatsoever why people play MMOs.

[Mordrak]

Perma-Death would only work if it was optional and basically offered street cred, like Hardcore mode in Diablo 2. That also means leveling would need to be accessible for most of its gameplay (no 10 hour levels).

Most of your suggestions are nice in theory but they aren't mass market suggestions. Though, from what I understand, most MMOs only need 40-50k subscribers in order to be profitable. You figure that there could a greater diversity of MMOs if everyone didn't want WoW numbers.

[Gunmetal]

Perma-death is an awesome way to get people to feel even more involved with their characters. "Oh my god, I just lost seven months of character development! /wrists." Frankly, most MMORPGs don't need more ways of imparting crushing disappointment on people.

No maps just means that everyone will either
a) buy the hintbook
b) have HRosesMMORPG.allakhazam.com open at all times
Hell, WoW has a built-in map and I still use WoWHead to get to quest areas. I accept that my character doesn't actually have a map of Azeroth built into his brain, just as I accept that he also doesn't need to sleep, eat or bathe and that a stack of bandages can heal him after a dragon made of nether energy bites him in half.

If you can press "L" to check your quest log you can also go ask NPCs and have them refresh your mind.

Unless the relevant NPCs follow you around at all times, it's not quite the same as pressing "L" and having the summary of all their information at your disposal. Plus, if you have dialog trees, you also have to remember how to get to the quest information, which you may not after a couple of months away.

Leveling through activity/use is a pretty good idea, the main problem is gating - how do you prevent someone from grinding in the newbie zone and then blasting through the next 5 areas of content with his high-ability fireballs? Maybe it doesn't matter - it's the user's choice?
Do you allow infinite skill-ups? If not, how do you indicate you've reached the cap?

[HRose]

Originally Posted by Lum

* Dialog trees are cool. I evangelize for them as well. The problem is that (a) they're exponentially more work, which is important when you have to develop the staggering amount of content required for an MMO and (b) they require a player to be engaged with the content, which not every player wishes to be.

Yeah, that's one of the two glaring problems. I don't have in mind a workable model yet, but the idea would be to ditch "trash" content to replace it with a cohesive/immersive PvE world where you can soak.

Ideally meaning that: the amount of content goes down, the amount of detail goes up, but the final "use" (in a "mudflation" way) is preserved. Content isn't quickly used and tossed away, but reused and part of the whole picture due to the different way it was developed.

Meaning also: this kind of "detailed" content cannot be done with the classic "seek and destroy" attitude. As it takes devs time to craft it, it takes players time to soak in it and wade through it. If you don't interact with NPCs, understand the task, delve into it, explore, you won't go anywhere (the "mandatory" part of the principle).

My idea way back was to create "worlds" (in the multiverse way), where each world can get content added with the time, but not content added that goes to REPLACE old content. So each of these worlds becomes richer over time.

A lot of content in today's mmorpgs (it may be as well as much as 60%) is flatly ignored, unseen, quickly discarded or mudflated. That's the main problem.

* Automaps, quest tracking, etc: these things are requirements in today's market. A game that eschews them in the name of "immersion" is casting itself as a very niche game. A new player will ask, quite correctly, why they are not there.

As I said the challenge here isn't about having the courage to remove them. But to find alternatives to compensate the lack of them. I have my ideas but it's hard to explain them as they work on per-quest basis.

It's not about removing accessibility stuff in the name of immersion. It's about finding different solutions that are still efficient.

That's the goal. I don't know if you can hit it completely (like giving up to a quest diary), but I'm sure you can go near.

* Trying to wedge a singleplayer game into an MMO context will not do well. World of Warcraft does it in the absolute best way possible, and it shows the limits of this approach pretty well.

This is the second glaring problem, an aspect that doesn't completely satisfy me, but that corresponds with my idea of detaching PvP from PvE. There are parts that connect together, but I believe that those aspects of PvE work better by recapturing that particular mood of old RPGs.

You can say that my idea shows its limits. And I can say that Diku-like PvE has shown its limits.

My idea used the concept of the multiverse to create excused and meaningful instanced spaces. More than a "limit" it's just a model not completely appropriate for what a MMORPG should offer, but the idea is to then recuperate those elements in the PvP side (as all these ideas are conceived on a bigger model).

To explain better I'd have to go in detail but I'm sure I'd bore everyone.

Originally Posted by Gunmetal

No maps just means that everyone will either
a) buy the hintbook
b) have HRosesMMORPG.allakhazam.com open at all times

And I'll say again that, if it happens, it means that my goal was missed completely.

I KNOW that you have the compelling need to take a known structure and apply those principles I described above, but that's not the intent.

As I wrote the goal is to remove non-immersive aids and REPLACE them with immersive aids. Not just remove them.

So if a player gets stuck and feels frustrated in a quest, it means that the goal isn't being executed.

Gathering informations when you don't know how to accomplish a task should be done IN-GAME. It means that the quest designer, when building the quest, must ask himself: "What the player would need at this point? What would be his doubts?". And then transform those needs/questions into dialogs and interactions with NPCs.

You don't know where the spider cave is? They'll tell you to go ask a lumberman who lives south, in the small house next to the water well. And maybe, if you ask nicely, you may convince him to escort you there. Or just give you directions, or even draw you a map, or send his son with you (who may trigger a branching quest where this son gets poisoned and you have to find an antidote).

Originally Posted by fuzzyslug

Speaking of, not having a map sounds artificial to me. I can sit around for 5 minutes and realize I'm not the first person entering uncharted territory. Why the hell can't I get a map? I don't drive around Pennsylvania without a map. Why wouldn't I ask a vendor for a map? It would certainly be in demand. Wouldn't it be cool if you could buy them and, in some small ways, they were incorrect?

I don't have anything against this as it's immersive.

And the original description already contemplates the possibility of having NPC-drawn maps.

The purpose, again, is to intercept beforehand the needs of the player and NOT tell him: "haha, fuck you, this is hardcore". But instead to give him what he needs by finding immersive ways to do it.

"Immersive ways" meaning, for example, greater interaction with NPCs (as the first thing people do is ask other people for help or informations).

[pyrhic]

There are some interesting ideas in there, and some of them have already been done. The bit about leveling based on your use of skills was actually (imo) pretty well done in Dungeon Master ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeon...mputer_game%29 ).
but that was 20 years ago....wow..

But as others have mentioned, there are some that are utterly unworkable. Get rid of logs? I suppose if there were NO quests, no logs would be fine. But my expectations of a game, and more importantly, my value of my time have advanced considerably in 20 plus years. I won't play a MMO or CRPG where i'm required to have a 100 page handwritten journal to support my travels. Ultima 4 was a great game, but i wouldn't endure it again..

In my opinion, the single greatest problem to be remedied in RPGs is that TIME HAS NO RELEVANCE . If i play any other genre of game, the world reacts and acts regardless of what i do. If i stay still and build peons in my FPS, my AI opponent will come and crush me. In FPS, the AI will come and look for me. If my choice is to stay and do nothing, i will lose the game. This is not the case in MMO/RPGs where the world is stuck in suspended animation, awaiting the players next quest. The illusion of quick and decisive action is shattered as soon as you realize that the next part of the <blank> is frozen in time until you enter that particular area. I find it all so damn annoying - and it's gone no where in 20 years. It's quite sad that Pirates is more of an RPG than most RPGs - and one thing Pirates did so well (and which is so underacknowledged) is that it made time meaningful. It was the benchmark against which all your actions were measured. Yes, those wealthy, unplundered cities in the western gulf of mexico were so very ripe - but were they worth a year or two of game time? You only had about 20 years, was it worth wasting 10% of it for a really good haul so far away from friendly ports?

Apply this kind of mechanic to an RPG - ok, you can go and try to slay the dragon in the far corner of the map. It might give you great fame, and great treasure, but in the meantime your main adversary will gain strength - plus you'll age and your skills lessen - do you dare try both?

Another good thing that Pirates did was there was no 'win' condition. You could do better, or worse - but there wasn't anything to defeat. Though of course, you could make it your personal goal to eliminate a country or two, but that was your perogative. RPGs need to learn that - maybe there is no ultimate goal, but multiple parallel paths - and you make of them what you want.

[pyrhic]

OT: Just rereading the wiki on Dungeon Master...man, i loved most of what FTL put out...Oids, Sundog, Dungeon Master....though, in retrospect, i probably should blame them for my prolonging my virginity...hmm, them and Origin..

[Aeon221]

Honestly, a good hard look should be taken at how muds have been developing over the years. Much of what you seem to want (permaworld, preservation of the sense of wonder, lack of log/map/detailed out of game infosource, no quests BUT npc directed adventures) has already been done to death in muds, HRose.

To put in a plug for a game I used to play religiously (and still do hit it every now and again), wotmud.org. Nethack is good, but I found that game eminently more believeable. Try it out a bit and see if I'm right. Or even just ask around on the forum and see how many of the things you want already exist in there, and find out more about how they work.

You'll be surprised.

[rossm]

Originally Posted by HRose

As I wrote the goal is to remove non-immersive aids and REPLACE them with immersive aids. Not just remove them.
[..]
You don't know where the spider cave is? They'll tell you to go ask a lumberman who lives south, in the small house next to the water well. And maybe, if you ask nicely, you may convince him to escort you there. Or just give you directions, or even draw you a map, or send his son with you (who may trigger a branching quest where this son gets poisoned and you have to find an antidote).

MMOs already include dialog like this. You're not suggesting the in-game tools should be replaced with this information, as it's already there for the portion of people who enjoy being immersed in the world. You're suggesting it should be the only way to get the information, and that players would somehow love having to get information this way. It shouldn't, and they wouldn't.

It sounds to me like you're confusing how you want players to play, and how the game should be designed. Or you're just not correctly taking into account the players' natures when designing this game you think would be great fun.

[Matt Perkins]

HRose

I think I see the point of what you're saying, you want a real, involved experience in your MMORPG. You want to care what happens to your characters, to the world around you and you want to affect it... Right?

If that's the case, a new model has to be thought up for the most part. Take WoW for instance. It's pretty much the pinnacle of diku mud made graphical. With that design model, it's pretty much hit it's limit, plus or minus some changes here and there.

Something else has to be thought of, some way you can get players more involved in the game, that the world can be changed, that the players will start to think of the place as a real world and react accordingly. Removing things that are common place in modern day MMORPGs isn't going to solve the problem. It's just going to make people play the game less.

I get what you mean by removing those things too. By requiring people to be more involved in figuring things out, instead of going from point A to point B to kill something, the player is going to be more interested in the world around them, more observant, etc.

For instance, I knew the elf starting lands in EQ 1 extremely well. I knew by a fallen tree in the middle of no where that I was close zone exit, I knew by hills around Orc home there how close I was and how close I could get. I knew where most people died (on Orc Hill) when they were n00bs and I knew where to look for every kind of monster. And while that did breed familiarity, it didn't breed more involvement in the game. It just meant because I didn't have a map, I had to become intimately familiar with the landscape.

Is that a good thing...? I don't think so. I don't think that makes the world seem more alive or more interesting...


Want to give an example of your ultimate MMORPG quest? Maybe with some idea on how it would be implemented in a Massively Multiplayer environment.