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General: Massey: Why Not A Mystery MMO?
Dana
Member Posts: 2,415
Each week, Dana Massey asks "Why Not?" Today, he wonders why we don't have more non-violent MMOs and suggests the resurrection of the mystery genre would be the ideal place to start.
So how would a mystery/adventure MMO work, anyway, you ask?
Think of Clue. Not literally the board game, but a scenario like it. It’s a simple murder mystery that six people can play in under an hour. They can work together and share information, or deceive and mislead. It’s a perfect social bubble played around the kitchen table.
It’s a real world instance.
In my dream mystery/adventure MMO, players would be brought into instances, and instead of shooting each other in the face as most games require, they would be out to solve a crime, mystery or riddle.
;)
Read the full column here.
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
Comments
i respect you dude, i really do...but this article is beyond stupid.
Mystery MMO...are you serious? ALL of the content needs to be hand crafted for a start and so far i have seen pretty lackluster stuff by devs and player made content is still underdeveloped. Your point about walkthroughs and guides basically points out the one of the biggest flaws with this style of game.
You did however point out the stupid tradition of combat in MMO's, I think we need to ditch that tradition soon. When did MMO's (originally online simulations of an avatars life) ditch all the other aspects of life and just end up simulating combat?
Oh and i'd say the closest thing to a mystery online game that i have seen is The Ship and it is great fun to play. Sure it involves combat but it mixes it with mystery, suspense and a whole lot of fun moments.
MMO wish list:
-Changeable worlds
-Solid non level based game
-Sharks with lasers attached to their heads
Clue is a pretty good example of a mystery mechanic that doesn't require hand crafting... that was the core idea.
The walkthrough thing is tough, I agree though.
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
Clue is a pretty good example of a mystery mechanic that doesn't require hand crafting... that was the core idea.
The walkthrough thing is tough, I agree though.
tell you what, why have a game devoted to the mystery genre. Why not incorperate mystery elements into current and future MMO's? I've seen lots of lore that could easily be turned into a mystery quest/event. Also i think it could boost exploring a bit more (searching for clues), something i find fun in many games
MMO wish list:
-Changeable worlds
-Solid non level based game
-Sharks with lasers attached to their heads
Clue is a pretty good example of a mystery mechanic that doesn't require hand crafting... that was the core idea.
The walkthrough thing is tough, I agree though.
tell you what, why have a game devoted to the mystery genre. Why not incorperate mystery elements into current and future MMO's? I've seen lots of lore that could easily be turned into a mystery quest/event. Also i think it could boost exploring a bit more (searching for clues), something i find fun in many games
I agree, and I think I touched on that at one point. Basically, niche games in my opinion are a big part of evolution. Without combat, someone could do a really, really good mystery game. Then more mainstream MMOs might pick up the good parts.
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
I agree that combat is used far too much as a medium of entertainment in games these days - nearly every MMO released in the last five years has been near completely combat oriented, and that's a little sad.
If developers looked at ways of making a player avoid combat, or thinking before they initiate contact with a hostile NPC, I think we would see more intelligent players, and possibly, more robust, intriguing games.
As far as good examples of games that don't have pure combat in them, look at Abe's Odyssey and Abe's Exxodus. They were fantastic, action-ey puzzle platformers, where you had to make sure each following guy had their wits about them, and did exactly what you did, in order to get past enemies.
Your one pure "offensive" ability was to slap, which was meant to be used on friendly guys who were high on happy gas.
Your actual ability to kill enemies was to "chant" and take them over - which meant you could wander past them, or control enemy units... it was a very clever, fantastic game.
Then they went and, dare I say, ruined it with Munch's Odyssey - which enabled control of WTFHAX walker mechs, which had guns and could squish enemies... (although, this said, I only played the demo, where I guess, this would be considered cool - maybe there is more to the game, but I was disappointed with this straight off... *shrugs*)
Anyway, yes, I would probably enjoy a game where you were a mystery solver, but hell, I'd enjoy a game that was just a little less combat oriented...
I am playing EVE and it's alright... level V skills are a bit much.
You all need to learn to spell.
Clue is a pretty good example of a mystery mechanic that doesn't require hand crafting... that was the core idea.
The walkthrough thing is tough, I agree though.
Why not make the MMO yourself to show everyone? Why not!
I think a Clue Online or a Sherlock Holmes Online would be pretty cool and different. I just wouldn't want to have to play Tetris to find clues, that would suck.
When we get back from where we are going, we will return to where we were. I know people there!
If done right, this IP could provide the foundation for a great mystery based MMO.
It's an interesting concept. Not one that I personally would be interested in (I don't care for mysteries and puzzles), but done right, it definitely has some potential.
Firebrand Art
"You are obviously confusing a mature rating with actual maturity." -Asherman
Maybe MMO is not your genre, go play Modern Warfare...or something you can be all twitchy...and rank up all night. This is seriously getting tired. -Ranyr
If only it could happen. Back in 1978 I got my first computer ( A TRS-80). Playing adventure games was really fun. I remember the golden age of those games. Companies such as Infocom had great text games. Then Sierra came out with "Mystery House" that had graphics. They were crude but back then it was great.
I was in on the beta of "URU" It did fail however. It was an online adventure game. I also was in the beta of "Seed" It failed also.
Oh well maybe one day someone will come up with one that works.
However I think that most of the online gamers want fighting so I am not holding my breath.
A lot of people think adventure games are dead. There have been some however that have done well recently, In fact they are releasing "The curse of Monkey Island" again. It is thought of as one of the best adventure games ever.
This is the first of the "why not" series that I really like.
It would be tough as hell to pull off, but if it could be done well it could prove to be a fantastic concept and provide a unique experience.
I'd love to have some set up where a group of players set up a murder mystery situation and another group trys to solve it.
And just for the record, my name would be "The hardly boys" and I'd go around talking about my raging clues.
Well...your article intrigued me immensely and I starting drooling thinking about a game like this. However, what if you could make it like...Neverwinter Nights (or the second)? Or, as another example, City of Heroes/Villains with custom user content? It would make players less likely to look up walkthroughs if there really aren't any for the mysteries!
I like this idea, but I always am more attracted to open world games. Although I do like switching it up a bit, even a new approach at combat is nice it's basicly all skill bar stuff.
A good idea for a mystery mmo open world, would be 2 things, you could have a robber/detective style where people can be cops or robbers, pretty stereotypical but I don't think thats been explored in an mmo, say your playin in a google maps rendering of new york, you can knock over banks, do hitman missions and stuff like that. Although for detectives you figure it would devolve to jsut campin random banks hoping to cook some fools, but if you had to make it real life, say instead of dissapearing when you log out, you need a hide out or something? A safe house, maybe you could track down their safe houses and bust em when their offline, say you have apartments and stuff, but actually be able to go in them? I know this would be destructive on the system but not if you load areas by individual chuncks. So say a guy commits a bank robbery, you hunt around for finger prints hair samples blood samples, see if their on file maybe if they get caught or people can compile data on some sort of user data base on convicted fellons and their names or people and their dna so you can be out on the lookout for him hunt him down ect . Maybe even the shoes they wore, have some kind of glasses that highlight the specific print, tosses realism but would make it easier. Getaway cars yaddayadda
(Yes balance issues and other wholes in this idea would be maddening) But theres lots of room to get creative, thats what the industry is about, and i'd definately like to see some crazy inovation not nessisarily the idea i stated but theirs lots of stuff you could do and i'd like to see something different as well. .
So why did Uru and The Sims fail? I never got a chance to play them so I don't know.
Clue is an interesting model. If I remember correctly, the actual solution is just three random cards that are selected before the game begins. And when you play, you are in a group, where you compete against each other but also need each other--because isn't the mechanic that you ask questions of one player each turn about their cards? And then there's the board, I think you need to be in a particular room to ask about it, or something. The board is like an instance! And there's user-generated content! And it's different every time!
Vanguard has Diplomacy. I was quite amazed at how into Diplomacy I got, even though the "combat" is a card game. It still had gear, looting, rare drops, quests, experience gains, levels, tougher and tougher NPCs. It had everything but instances, and in theory there could be a Diplomacy instance. But Diplomacy made me realize that I didn't need combat from my MMOs (although I apparently still need gear, rare drops, quests, etc, etc.--rewards, in other words).
First of all, immagine Clue as it is as an MMO. Players would soon be calling it a new kind of grind. Who play's Clue on and on? My point is that even if you expand it, you still have a limited experience repeating, just as current MMOs have a limited experience repeating (called the grind).
So, as others have mentioned, why not incorporate it into a modern MMO, and expand that MMO experience? As a lover of real life mysteries of history, as well as of literature, I have often wondered why there isn't the strange and the mysterious, the unexplained, in my MMOs. There could be little ones and big ones, and some so big that it rocks your socks. And they don't have to be replayable, nor instanced, they can just be for players to find.
Has it been done before? Actually yes, I believe so. A very, very deep mystery of the ultimate kind.
Once upon a time....
wow I totally forgot about Myst. Whatever happened to those type of games ?
As far as making that mystery genre into an MMO, im all for it. I agree MMO's have focused too often on combat. I fear though that developers would rather focus on blood and guts as its probably a larger market than cerebal type content.
I would love to see an MMO where you have the both playstyles but reward the patient player for solving the mystery as opposed to just blowing Colonel Mustard's head off.
I'd love to see mysteries added into content of mmos. Instead of kill 10 bugs,, I'd rather have one long epic quest that I had to figure out the answers to step by step.
Or large dungeons would have quest/mysteries for epic encounters or side encounters with multiple outcomes. I think it really comes down to companies not wanting to spend the money and having a lack of really good writers.
Hell, remember the old days of SRPGs that had riddles in them you needed to answer to progress? It's about time MMO's stopped the dumbing down of its playerbase's minds and started challenging them.
I've found a few text based and browser based mystery games that aren't that bad. If someone were to create a mystery MMO, they could use those as inspriation.
Modus Operandi - Modus Operandi is a modern day role-playing game that combines mystery, adventure, and romance with the excitement of an ongoing story based on Morada, a fictional island in the Caribbean! I c&p'ed that blurb from the game's front page. This text-based game is run by Simutronics, of DragonRealms, GemStone and Hero's Journey fame.
Sleuth - Sleuth is an open-ended detective game where you solve mysteries by searching for clues, questioning suspects and interviewing witnesses. (got this description from google.)
If you like mysteries, Sleuth is pretty good game. It is ugly, but that's just my opinion. Modus Operandi, seems to be OK. I'm not sure how many players it has online at any given time, but I know the numbers are not as high as the 300-500 players that DragonRealms and Gemstone have during peek hours. People pay about 15 bucks to play there, so I guess its an OK game.
Anyway, I could see a graphical Mystery MMO. I'm baseing most of this off of Sleuth, which I like.
You'll have your classes: the good cop, the detective, the ex-con turned private investagator, etc.
Then there's skills: fingerprint analysis, fiber id, intimidation, lock picking etc
Quests (cases): Search and Rescue, where you beat up bad guys for whatever reason; Regular Detective work, where you go around town finding clues and pointing fingers; Side jobs where you build up rapport with people so you can get better leads from them, etc
Well, I'm putting too much thought into this. But I can see this happening. I can't see it being a big budget game, but a small niche one.
This type of game would be easy to pull off. First off you would make a clone of GTA4. Only instead of 500,000 anonymous random people walking around, each person in the world would be given a set of traits. Name, where they live, where they work, places they frequent etc. Then have each of those NPC's have a random number of people in the game that they know, are friends with or are related to. You could make it so that the city was maybe twice as big as Liberty City and each time a player logged in they would be dropped down into the precinct as a police officer and everything would be based on rank. You would basically have people solving crimes and the first few levels/ranks would be simple stuff. You're assigned an area and must solve whatever crimes are put on the board when you log in.
After a while you get bumped in pay grade and rank and get to choose vice/homocide whatever and then solve those types of crimes. There are 35000 cops in New York so it could be as massively multiplayer as you want. This particular city would be rife with crime so you would never have to write parking tickets or do parade duty and because the town is now more like Gotham where many many people are turning to crime the city is paying bonuses for cracking a case. Corruption could be a part of the game, but if another player busted you you would have to be bumped down in rank and they would get a bonus/whatever. If you decided to use your gun to kill every bad guy you see, eventually you would lose your job or go to prison and have to start another character. Eventually, after you reached a certain rank as a detective you would retire from the force and be a private detective getting to solve the really cool stuff, get your own office, gear cars. You could make money the driving force because a detective with nightivsion/money to access certian info/money to hire a lower level detective to run surveilence/ anything would be possible.
All the crimes at lower levels would be randomly generated from a list of things that lead to an NPC commiting such and such crime and x amount of evidence was randomly created. Maybe a different, random number of NPC's saw it happen, whatever they wanted they could do. The bigger stuff that only higher level players have access to would be scripted in the macro sense, but every time the facts and evidence would have to be randomly generated. High level stuff might take a ton of money paying a local lab to do CSI type stuff for you or you spend a whole day doing leg work. Making and kjeeping contacts at every level of player would always be a benefit. You could make up a daily newspaper that had random stuff but maybe clues for the high end stuff and the goal of the end game type might be trying to be the detective who solved the biggest cases of the week and getting your picture on the front page.
I agree to some of the post, a out of solve a mystery type of game in terms of NPC interaction will be much better than the current model. However, I am not so certain about entirely focusing on being a mytery game.
Usually in mystery games there are complex interaction and story that takes the player to a grand scheme leading to a storyline climax. However, this mystery are usually just a storyline with maybe some choices that affect the outcome. This means that most player will play it once, and maybe 2-3 more times depend on the player. However, a mystery is really only good before it is solved. Once it is done with, players can get bored, especially in MMORPG. If there are multiple mysteries, it will still yield the same result. Over time the constant mystery solving take its toll as it becomes just another mystery to be solved.
I suppose the above points depend on the game's system. However, I firmly believe that a mystery should be part of the MMORPG experience and not the entire focus. A mystery should pique player's interest in the game's storyline or quest. Making it interesting and captivating, this might actually be the key to step away from the straight forward quest models the MMORPG industry currently adapt.
I would play the shit out of this game. People would start wondering where I was and stuff.
Great idea, i think.... I was thinkng too on this for years, like why not do for exemple the good board game "Cluedo" in MMO. Im realy happy that Warcraft 3 guys made a mod for that. However its still not MMO and not in adventure style. If u have to choose between a completely new MMO and a Minigame i vote for Minigame.
MMO Minigame:
I think if u do some inside house (evry MMO has houses inside game) action, and faction choice in the beggininng of the minigame (players could choose to be a "murderer" or an "innocent"). However they only can do 1 murder, but they can use any kind of things that the MMO have (magic, poison, sword,...), and can use anything inside house to kill and hide the body. This way innocent players have to find the crime and have to solve who did it, but the murderer have still his/her presence so he can defend his/herself with making false clues, if they find the murderer, players can decide what to win with it (exp, items...ect.), those they can use outside in main world.... U can even make this turn based or random, so if som1 choosed to be murderer first he can be the innocent next turn (or 2 murderers in game so it can be that 1 of them will be the 1 who dies....- just think about it -).
- consumes less time to make maps, and less money too
- More costumers (those players will play it too, who is registered for fighting game)
- Unique, guaranteed project dnt fails.... and if it is u dnt have to drop the whole game out of the window.
- U dnt have to figure out mysteries, becouse players will do it in their own ways of ideas.... (making mysteries more funny then only solving it)
MMO Game:
- Consumes lots of time to make maps, and money too
- Less costumers (U will have players only who want to play clues game, and as u guys said there is more fighting than non-fighting MMO)
- can be unique, but if project fails.... whole game can be thrown to bin.
So i think ur idea is great, but u have to think out what will be the most liked Non-fight effect u want to put inside ur idea. and have to think its marketing.....
Although it is plenty violent, I've been under the impression that Funcom's The Secret World will be our adventure/mystery/puzzle MMO.
I dont get it. Why would such a game be an MMO to begin with instead of a single player game? I didnt see any elements in the game that would be suitable for an MMO environment.
The point of an MMO is for people to interact with each other, either against each other or cooperate against an AI. A mystery MMO would need minimal such interaction and would hence be pointless as an MMO.
Also, most games, cater to the young male audience (young being anywhere from 15-35) and that audience likes, fictional, violence so a non-violent MMO would not cater to the majority of the audience. Possibly would it appeal to the female audience but isnt there already such an MMO, Sim something? Where you just live and do nothing special. Sounds pretty boring to me. *shrug*
My gaming blog
RTFA. The Sims Online died horribly in flames.
Also, please don't paint people with that brush of yours - it's a mite wide. 15-35 males may play MMOGs with violence, but then, so does a large proportion of females. This is well documented in various studies. And similarly, I for one (at 31) would definitely play a mystery MMO - likely together with my wife, who also loves the adventure/mystery genre. It just remains to be seen if it can be done right.
Some of the ideas that have come up in this thread sound promising (NYPD Online, as told above being the prime example IMO), and generating content can be done, if you know your coding and your software design, and have a few bright ideas. A Clue/Cluedo style setup, where the elements of the mystery are generated on the fly by the game from a number of prefab pieces would work quite well. Clue has IIRC 6 murder weapons, six suspects, and eight or nine murder locations, and it's a rasre thing that the same mystery comes up. Now, instead, have 20-30 different possible weapons, 30 motivations, 50 suspects, and a bunch of pieces of evidence to add into the mix, and a murder mystery can be generated that has a 1-in-20-million chance of ever being seen again. Then add other types of crimes or mysteries to solve. Suddenly, guides are much less useful, and player mystery solving skills become paramount. Cooperatively, you could work as a team on it, some players interrogating suspects and interviewing witnesses, some finding clues at the scene of the crime, some doing lab work, etc. Solving the crime means having the evidence to present a criminal case, or similar, for which the whole team would then get credit.
No violence involved. But lots of thinking and putting pieces together.