3 Things Jack Could Do Right: Part 3 (long)

noxdraconis

Read part 1 here

Read part 2 here

 

Part 3: Make it Physical.

 

Meet Gravity Girl. She is beautiful. She is powerful. She wears a slinky costume that would turn Emma Peel green with envy. And, oh yeah, she can control gravity.

 

In City of Heroes, she would be a Gravity Controller. She would have a set of powers that provide a combination of immobilization (the control part) and damage, all vaguely based on the idea of controlling gravity. The most ludicrous of these is propel, in which a random object (a spool of cable, a desk, a barrel, etc) appears out of nowhere (I know she is not hiding them in THAT costume) and flies towards its target at high speed, doing serious damage when it connects.

 

Here is the idea. Let’s let Gravity Girl actually control gravity. 

 

For this to be meaningful, we must have a simulated world that is defined by the interaction of physical forces, including the interaction between the objects that comprise the world. In other words, we need physics.

 

Take, for example, throwing a ball. In the real world, if you throw a ball, how fast and how far it goes is a function of the force you impart to it when you throw it. In addition, it doesn’t just stop because it exceeded its ‘range’, it falls because of the effect of gravity.

 

Our simulated world should work the same way.  Throw a barrel, a crate or even a car and it should follow a trajectory defined by gravity and the amount of force initially imparted to it. Slide it along the floor and friction should cause it stop (if doesn’t hit someone or something else first).

 

But the physics of our simulated world should not be fixed. Heroes have superpowers which can modify or even reverse them. Cover the road with ice, and suddenly the friction coefficient (what causes a sliding object to eventually halt) goes to near zero. Or have Gravity Girl alter the force of gravity, and suddenly Captain Muscles can throw that car a lot farther then he could before.

 

Here is another example. Time, or rather the rate of change, is just another physical quantity. Imagine having a hero, let’s call him Time Lad, who can slow down, or even freeze time in small areas. Bomb blasts, falling buildings, that pesky nuclear reactor that’s always on the verge of a critical meltdown -- all of these situations could be handled by Time Lad in ways that just aren’t possible for other heroes.

 

Of course, just adding physics to the game is not enough. City of Heroes actually has a fairly good physics engine. They were one of the first MMO’s to implement the PhysX SDK. But without a simulated world created from dynamically interacting objects, all the physics engine is really good for is making pretty patterns when you walk through a pile of leaves.

 

Look again at our three heroes: Time Lad, Captain Muscles, and Gravity Girl. Each one has unique powers that he or she can use on their own or in tandem with another hero. Yes, either Time Lad or Gravity Girl could do crowd control while Captain Muscles pounds away at the bad guys. But they can also use their powers in unique ways based on the powers themselves, not on what role the developers have decided they should play within a group. Is Gravity Girl a defender? A controller? A tank? The answer should be none of the above. She is a superhero who can control gravity.

 

There is one more advantage to using physics in the ways we have been discussing. Most MMOs (including all the popular fantasy MMOs) reduce magic based characters to being ranged damage dealers. Even the pen and paper version of Champions, with its magic pools (groups of powers that can be selected one at a time), does not really capture magic very well. Yet what is magic but the ability to alter (or perhaps methodically twist) the laws of physics. Want to walk on the ceiling? Reverse the effect of gravity. Reinforce a door? Increase its mass 100 fold. With physics, we can finally have magic based characters that act ways that seem, well, magical. 

 

Dr. Fate would be proud.

~nox

Hype

I've read your series and this little set up really applies to nearly ANY mmo.  Placing the linear storylines inside a simulation sandbox really is the way to go at this point in the industry's development.

I'm pretty sure that ChO won't do all that.  They'll have some objectiveness and some battlegrounds, but I highly doubt they'll simulate  physics beyond friction and projectile speed on any meaningful level.

noxdraconis

Originally posted by Hype


I've read your series and this little set up really applies to nearly ANY mmo.  Placing the linear storylines inside a simulation sandbox really is the way to go at this point in the industry's development.
I'm pretty sure that ChO won't do all that.  They'll have some objectiveness and some battlegrounds, but I highly doubt they'll simulate  physics beyond friction and projectile speed on any meaningful level.

 

Heya Hype, thanx for reading through all my verbiage.  Yeah, your right, most of this could be used in any MMO.   I really believe that sandboxes, in some form, are the future of MMOs.  Its just a question of how big of a market contraction (and resulting shakeout) will be necessary to get there.

I hear what your saying about Champions.  Honestly, I am neutral on the game so far (maybe if I get a an early beta invite I might change my mind   Its just that I have been playing City of Heroes since I1 (and its still my favorite game out there) so it was natural to choose Champions as a setting for thinking about what MMOs could be.

Maybe if Positron ever decides to make CoH 2 he could send me a tell...

~nox