MMOs talk about the grand adventure, but they give you the same day over and over again. You kill the same things over and over. Everything stays in the same place, every day is the same as yesterday. The same guy hands out the same lame quest, to everyone, everyday. Everybody does the same lame quests. Time has no meaning, players have no impact. The MMO genre will continue to stagnate and bore the game community until some developer steps up and makes a changing living world. One where time moves forward and tomorrow is different than today.
Also, you mentioned that we couldn't appease the OP. Let's take a look at his original post as compared to the game we are building in CoS.
We do not repeat the same day, time moves forward. You do not kill the same things over and over, no monsters pop back into existence in CoS. Everything does not stay in the same place, and each day is a new day. The same guy does not hand out the same lame quest. First, our quests are far from 'lame' and second, NPCs are not given quests to hand out to every player. Time has meaning and players do have impact on the world. In our world, time moves forward and tomorrow is always different than today.
Anyway, we're tired of people telling us what we can't do, which is why a group of us who have worked at various game companies for years, and been constantly told what we cannot do, decided to go ahead and build Citadel of Sorcery.
You played the card, so you know the next question:
What developers are working on this project?
-- Whammy - a 64x64 miniRPG - RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right? - FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
There's a little problem though: development costs.
Say an average MMO contains 1000 quests. Now this is a fixed, non dynamic, world. Like you say, each day it is the same all over.
The closest system I can think of would be to allow change of the world on a local basis. The problem is though that if one really wants a changing world, then after I take my first mission, that mission should cease to exist and another should take its place.
Now imagine about 10.000 players on a server (just a big guess in this case), they all pass through the same NPC that is supposed to supply them with a 'unique' quest. That would already be 10.000 quests from ONE NPC. Obviously no developer will be willing to invest that kind of money in any game.
I can imagine a mechanic like this though:
Quest 1: NPC asks player to attack village and burn it down.
Quest 2: NPC (2) asks player to help put out the fire.
Quest 3: NPC (2) asks player to help rebuild the town.
Quest 1:...... etc.
Give it a nice twist and based upon the player's actions they align themselves towards evil or good.
In a PvE setting, I think this will be the closest one will get to a 'changing' or evolving world. But still, that is 3 times the development costs of a quest, as opposed to the persistant world model.
Like others said, the best you can get in these days MMOs is PvP where the outcome actually influences the world (someone conquers a town, which has an effect on the world).
Then there are GM ran events that change the game world. But also those cost lost of development time, so those will not be very frequent.
One way or another, I don't see this progressing world happen anytime soon. Maybe in 10-20 years from now, but in the near future I think we will have to settle for the old fashion model for a while to come still.
Originally posted by Jatar Also, you mentioned that we couldn't appease the OP. Let's take a look at his original post as compared to the game we are building in CoS.
We do not repeat the same day, time moves forward. You do not kill the same things over and over, no monsters pop back into existence in CoS. Everything does not stay in the same place, and each day is a new day. The same guy does not hand out the same lame quest. First, our quests are far from 'lame' and second, NPCs are not given quests to hand out to every player. Time has meaning and players do have impact on the world. In our world, time moves forward and tomorrow is always different than today.
I'd say we fit the bill quite nicely.
Peter Molyneux, is that you?
No offense but I'll believe it when I see it. Although I wish you all the best on your game and hope you guys do pull off everything you're saying in your posts. All the more power to you but frankly I'm tired of all the baloney devs go on about their game is going to have, and then you get into the game and it doesn't live up to the hype.
Of course, here's hoping you or someone does. Certainly not against the possibility.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
until MMOs start implementing good ole fashioned GM ran events all the time, were gonna eat static. I get tired of hearing the reasons this wont work.
Yes, with our present technology...I think I have to agree. (Although there is a developer in this very thread that says...we're wrong...and that's actually a good and hopeful thing!)
Funny thing is....the ONLY new game that I have heard of with plans to do this is Alganon where the GMs ARE in the game all the time and there are plans for GM run events, as well as the GMs playing the various deities in the game, of which one will have to choose the deity they will worship. Your choice will determine various things/quests, etc. that you get that someone who worships another deity will not. (I just re-read the thread and see that some other games, like Citadel of Sorcery, also intend to do this, so maybe all hope isn't lost for developers to try this sort of thing again.)
And of COURSE....Alganon, because of being released too early (not finished), various alpha and beta level bugs still present, and some people comparing it visually to WoW, so much as to call it a CLONE....has been dogged to such a high degree on MMORPG.com, that most people here wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole now.
I wonder if we'll be willing to give it another chance when they implement the GM run content?
Just a thought. Because I certainly see a lot of things hoped for on these forums, but when indie devs attempt to actually DO those things, quite often their games get run into the dirt for the imperfections rather than anything worthy they may have done being complimented. Think Darkfall..... yeah, people STILL love to dog that game, and yet....if you go back to the days before it's release.... people were whining for many of the features it HAS.
I'm not sure gamers are EVER happy and content.
Maybe what we all need is to take a BREAK from gaming and go "play" a REAL LIFE for a while. There are plenty of adventures there to be had, and with REAL risk and reward too.
How bout GMs earn the money we pay them? Go possess some NPC and create some dynamic situation like attack the town. Kill some noobs. Drop some great loot when you die
Kill some noobs... wow, if there's anything a player would like more than getting ganked by another player, it would be getting ganked by a GM. They may as well put a cancel button on the hotbar.
You know, I keep seeing this meme, and I keep wondering what the people who promote it are smoking.
"You know what would be COOL? If, like, these MONSTERS appeared in some city, and, like THEY KILLED EVERYONE and there'd be, like, bodies everywhere and stuff, and, like, no one could shop or trade or finish quests or craft 'cause there'd be ALL THESE MONSTERS and then it would be SO AWESOME!"
Reply from the Usual Suspects:" But then everyone would team up to fight the monsters!"
Reply from Reality ('cause I've seen this shit pulled in UO, back in Ye Oldene Dayse):"No, most of the players will just log off, and of those who don't, they'll either leave the city until the stupidity is over or randomly run around looting bodies after using AOE to 'tag' as many monsters as possible. That's assuming the entire thing doesn't cause a lagfest that crashes the server."
Generally, this sort of stuff works only if it's a scheduled, planned, event and everyone knows about it and is ready for it. Even then, it's a crapshoot as to how the player base (and the server) will react. It's not something you can do every day. ("Oh, it's Tuesday? Time for the dragons to attack.")
A huge number of posters on this board, despite often whining about "instancing" and "community" seem to forget a typical MMORPG needs 250K players, minimum, to survive, let alone thrive. When proposing any "great new cool awesome idea", they need to stop asking "Would *I* find this cool?" or "Would me and MY BUDDIES find this cool?" but, "Would the vast majority of the players find this cool, given the huge variance in playstyles, playtime, and skill levels, and, of chose who don't find it cool, how many would find it uncool enough that they'd quit?"
This reminded me of when I was playing WoW. There was this MASSIVE scourge event where people were getting killed by npcs left and right....it was interferring with their trips to the auction house and their mindless rep grinding and PEOPLE GOT SO PISSED that Blizzard had to end it.
Well that pissed ME OFF enough to quit the game. Because I LOVED the event. It made WoW seem ALIVE! It was actually DANGEROUS to try to get to a flight path. Your "safe city" was no longer always safe. You might get attacked by a zombie and become a zombie and have to attack other people to survive, or die even...and be forced to "waste time" because of dying. I was in HEAVEN for that event and it seemed everyone around me was whining and quitting the game and calling Blizzard, and yelling on the forums about it....
Was the biggest whinefest I have EVER seen, bar non, in any game EVER. So what does Blizzard do? They shorten the event....they take it down a notch and n00b-friendly it. GAG. Back to boring boring boring.
I doubt they'd ever even do something like that again because of all the bitching it caused. (And yes...I realize I'm talking about WoW here, but....I have to wonder how well "newbie" to MMORPG types would handle this realism in ANY game.)
I think were far from a pve focused mmo that changes dynamically. Kinda why I enjoy pvp focused, open ended mmos. When players are the content nothing stays the same. I do have one syggestion though. Saga of RYzom has GM ran events that change lore forever its world is also pretty cool due to weather/seasons one zones creature spawns and behavior are never the same. Its the closest i've ever seen a pve focused mmo come to what you want OP.
Ryzom, however, is also a sandbox, that I've heard, has very little actual content. Lots of crafting though, I hear, and some other things that sound wonderful. Players, really is seemed, have to create their own game, more or less. But to be honest....I played it for only a few hours and was terribly bored. I kept playing only a few days total. The interface is so flippin' complicated, that half the time I was in game I was asking questions in community chat that would have been entirely unnecessary with a better interface. I mean, FFS, UO is years and years old, and I never had to ask how to use the interface.
There aren't (or weren't apparent to me, anyway) a lot of quests really, so it for sure seemed "sandboxy." I generally like a sandbox type game, having come from Ultima Online originally, but....you know....I'd really like maybe just a LITTLE more than a bucket and shovel in my sandbox.
However...to each their own. I'm sure Ryzom is THE perfect game for some, otherwise it would have died long ago.
This reminded me of when I was playing WoW. There was this MASSIVE scourge event where people were getting killed by npcs left and right....it was interferring with their trips to the auction house and their mindless rep grinding and PEOPLE GOT SO PISSED that Blizzard had to end it.
Well that pissed ME OFF enough to quit the game. Because I LOVED the event. It made WoW seem ALIVE! It was actually DANGEROUS to try to get to a flight path. Your "safe city" was no longer always safe. You might get attacked by a zombie and become a zombie and have to attack other people to survive, or die even...and be forced to "waste time" because of dying. I was in HEAVEN for that event and it seemed everyone around me was whining and quitting the game and calling Blizzard, and yelling on the forums about it....
Was the biggest whinefest I have EVER seen, bar non, in any game EVER. So what does Blizzard do? They shorten the event....they take it down a notch and n00b-friendly it. GAG. Back to boring boring boring.
I doubt they'd ever even do something like that again because of all the bitching it caused. (And yes...I realize I'm talking about WoW here, but....I have to wonder how well "newbie" to MMORPG types would handle this realism in ANY game.)
I agree with your sentiment. Random, well orchestrated events are the next step in the evolution of MMOs. Not instancing a player to death, not PvP by itself (though a random event that involves PvP certainly is), and not constant expansions that provide more linear content for a player to burn through. Minor cities (those not being the hubs of trade or the starting cities for a player) SHOULD be randomly attacked and invaded (with only short warning), and it SHOULD be up to the players to assure their world isn't overrun by, essentially, the players' apathy. If you're too busy leveling your character and farming for your gear to worry about the effects these invasions would have on parts of the world not immediately pertinent to you, maybe you should be playing a singleplayer game, where there are no other players and every invasion is slated to start the moment it becomes ultimately pertinent to you. Though, that isn't to say these events shouldn't provide players with some kind of reward for participating.
Maybe a better term is semi-random. Not all these events should come with only an hour's warning. If a major, integral city is going to be attacked, the players should have a couple days' notice that an army is marching on their capital, and a projected time as to when that army will reach the gates. The largest problem with this currently is the latency and performance issues, but there are all sorts of neat ways to circumvent these problems. For example, segment the besieged city into quarters (or more), and they essentially become shards a couple hundred players can enter to defend their city from the invasion. To explain this through lore, one would need to simply deny a player access to a full "shard" by displaying a message such as, "This area of the city is well-fortified, maybe it would be best to see if another part of the city could use your help.."
As Jatar has implied, there are no impossibilities. Only challenges to overcome.
I suppose you could make a somewhat dynamic world environment, if you are willing to accept a fair amount of it being generic in nature. I find it hard to believe that it could be possible to write enough different 'story' to provide one hundred people with an individual worthwhile experience, let alone thousands. You can probably write story elements which the server might throw together with a certain random element thrown in to spruce it up. Similar like games such as Diablo, Torchlight or Borderlands do it with Mobs and Maps. Furthermore, it is so nice to see that the EVE nerds made an appearance yet again to blab on how great their favorite land of make believe is, even after it has been made abundantly clear already that no one but them cares about that particular kind of shit. Warms the heart.
This made me laugh. EVE definitely is NOT for everyone. I don't even enjoy the whole science fiction spaceship genre, but I played it for a good while just to stretch myself into looking at other styles within the genre.
It's probably a great thing that EVE's player base loves their game so much. Personally, I think a love for the game you're actively playing is a GOOD thing, and that includes those who are playing and loving WoW, EQ2, LotRO, GW, Aion, or whatever else. But the EVE crowd does have a tendency, it seems, to always show up and say how their game is far superior to this, that, and the other, in almost every thread. LOL
Well, no one said it would be easy to make a dynamic world where time moves on and players can have some influence on the progress of the world. But just because something is hard does not mean it cannot be done. I'm on the design team behind such a project. No game engine that existed when we started could have made our game work. It has taken a dedicated team of programmers and designers five years to get this past the concept to a working prototype. But make no mistake, it is possible. Many of the points you are making about why this is difficult (or why you think it cannot be done) are absolutely valid problems that had to be overcome. But they have been overcome. Enough game content seems to be one of your main sticking points. Well, it was certainly one of ours. We found the answer in more new technology. We designed a tool to construct content faster and easier. This is not your fetch me ten goblin skulls questing. Each quest we build is over 12 hours of play (if you hurry). The stories are deep, the episodes within a single quest many. All the way through the quests you are making choices that change the quest. But it's not a simple branching model. A story is written, then that story is put through a proprietary tool that helps vary the quest and construct portions of it on the fly. This means that although the concept of the quest is written, the details of the quest are created at run time, and the player's past and present are factored into the alterations done to the quest. This creates a quest that is neither simple auto generated content, nor all hand made effort by scripting. These are tailored quests, each worthy of a fantasy novel. Just fifty of these quests would take an average players (note the word average) about two years of time to complete. Now, everyone isn't average, there are those that will chain themselves to the computer and have food delivered and play 24 hours a day. Can they power through the content? Sure. Here is a news flash... we don't care. Yes, that's right, if someone wants to power through two years content for the average player in two months, get to it. They still get their monies worth, even if they take it all at once. It's like complaining that a speed reader can power through the Lord of the Rings books in two hours. OK, so? Let them. It will take me about ten to twelve hours. Either way, we read the books. Anyway, we're tired of people telling us what we can't do, which is why a group of us who have worked at various game companies for years, and been constantly told what we cannot do, decided to go ahead and build Citadel of Sorcery. We purposely took on the hard choices and made it vastly different. Will some people hate it? Sure, but we don't need to please everyone, that's impossible. What we can do is make the game we have always wanted to play, and that's exactly what we're doing. Now that the game engine is 80% complete and the world is up and running. Most of the issues we have faced are behind us. New problems will arise, but contrary to the posts of some people in this thread, nothing is impossible.
Jatar Designer at MMO Magic, Inc. Citadel of Sorcery project.
I hope your company will tell the whiny kids to shove it up their collective asses.
Untill they come out with this new inovating game I sugest that all of you that are tired of the themparks, head on over and join the Elite gamers like myself in EvE. Themeparks are for girls, noobs and carebares, Real men play EvE remeber that ladies... This bit is too funny... and a bit ironic. Well, by your declaration... since only "real men" play Eve and themeparks are for girls, etc, I hope you're enjoying your sausage-fest while us "noobs" and "carebears" are havin' a blast with the ladies... LOL!
Im glad you caught the Irony of my last statment. Yes GIRLs play WoW... this to me is one of its largest selling points and the single factor that it now has 10m subs. Like all the good designer decisions that Blizzard made this was the best one for sure. Dudes go where there are girls pure and simple. A Nigh club can be the best in the world but if there are no girls it will go under. Make a a game for girls and boys will play it just to meet them. This should be in all new mmo makers minds, how to make an mmo that girls would like to play.
Right now they don't go together,The level of programming that it will have the those two things together is silly.People don't realize the amount of content that would have to be in game like that.When people end up playing and have nothing to do they will realize why wow and other mmo are making the choices they do for example
Let pretend they 6 unique dragons a game,and guild set out to kill them all.The thing is it summer time and guild is made up of high schoolers and college students so they have unlimited time so in a space of week,They have killed all dragons because they where playing 12-14 hour playing sessions.You only have 2-3 hours a day to play
or
One Guild whose goal is just make thing miserable for everybody,They set out to kill every important npc and unique monster in game.In space of week they slaughter many of the important npc in most of the cities,In month they have killed most of unique monsters.
Dynamic Content often mean you will have nothing to do because somebody did or waiting around until the content come back again.Instances and phasing have their place but they are certain players who seemless world and i hope they get it but we all ready know is going to happen players are going to complain about nothing to do or long wait times for monsters that is why the games change from that model in first place.Hopeful one of these day the tech catches up or their is large enough company willing to constantly fill a game with content but until then instances and phasing will be best way having dynamic changing world.
MMOs talk about the grand adventure, but they give you the same day over and over again. You kill the same things over and over. Everything stays in the same place, every day is the same as yesterday. The same guy hands out the same lame quest, to everyone, everyday. Everybody does the same lame quests. Time has no meaning, players have no impact. The MMO genre will continue to stagnate and bore the game community until some developer steps up and makes a changing living world. One where time moves forward and tomorrow is different than today.
Also, you mentioned that we couldn't appease the OP. Let's take a look at his original post as compared to the game we are building in CoS.
We do not repeat the same day, time moves forward. You do not kill the same things over and over, no monsters pop back into existence in CoS. Everything does not stay in the same place, and each day is a new day. The same guy does not hand out the same lame quest. First, our quests are far from 'lame' and second, NPCs are not given quests to hand out to every player. Time has meaning and players do have impact on the world. In our world, time moves forward and tomorrow is always different than today.
I'd say we fit the bill quite nicely.
Actually, I was referring to Ceradin, which is where the quote came from. At this point, I'll have to leave it to both of them to voice their own opinion.
Thing is, you still haven't described how your players will have an impact on the world, other than their own "reflected world". How does what an individual player or group in their "reflected world" have an impact on the "reflected world" of others, or the "real world" that they share outside the "reflected worlds"? Please provide an example.
On the other side of things, how do you deal with the issues Lizard_sf spoke of? I get halfway through a quest(save the princess) and have to log off. I log on a week later. Is it possible my quest will no longer be finishable? Has the princess been saved by someone else/executed due to my inactions? Or does time pass in my "reflected world" based on my own time spent? If so, how do you sync the events and consequences of my character in the "real" gaming world? If you don't sync the events, how do you create a cohesive, relevant story from 10's of thousands of gaming worlds in which time has not progressed evenly?
I bid you luck and hope your game gets released. If you read my posts here and elsewhere you'd know I like solo friendly games and have little issue with instanced content. But until the rubber hits the road and you have 10's of thousands of people logging onto your servers playing through your content, I can't help but to be skeptical about the game. Particularly when its website spends most of its time criticizing "other games" and little time explaining how gameplay will work in its own game.
Originally posted by Jatar Also, you mentioned that we couldn't appease the OP. Let's take a look at his original post as compared to the game we are building in CoS.
We do not repeat the same day, time moves forward. You do not kill the same things over and over, no monsters pop back into existence in CoS. Everything does not stay in the same place, and each day is a new day. The same guy does not hand out the same lame quest. First, our quests are far from 'lame' and second, NPCs are not given quests to hand out to every player. Time has meaning and players do have impact on the world. In our world, time moves forward and tomorrow is always different than today.
I'd say we fit the bill quite nicely.
Peter Molyneux, is that you?
No offense but I'll believe it when I see it. Although I wish you all the best on your game and hope you guys do pull off everything you're saying in your posts. All the more power to you but frankly I'm tired of all the baloney devs go on about their game is going to have, and then you get into the game and it doesn't live up to the hype.
Of course, here's hoping you or someone does. Certainly not against the possibility.
Funny you'd say that. The game design he's talking about reminds me very much of Fable II, which I guess is why I'm skeptical. As a mostly single player game which other players can join, I can see how you can pull such a design off. But as a MMO, I don't see it from a practical point of view, and I certainly don't see realistically adding new content on a daily basis. It has nothing to do with whether it CAN be done, rather, whether doing it is a good idea, and will be a positive experience when you have 10's of thousands of people logged in.
This reminded me of when I was playing WoW. There was this MASSIVE scourge event where people were getting killed by npcs left and right....it was interferring with their trips to the auction house and their mindless rep grinding and PEOPLE GOT SO PISSED that Blizzard had to end it.
Well that pissed ME OFF enough to quit the game. Because I LOVED the event. It made WoW seem ALIVE! It was actually DANGEROUS to try to get to a flight path. Your "safe city" was no longer always safe. You might get attacked by a zombie and become a zombie and have to attack other people to survive, or die even...and be forced to "waste time" because of dying. I was in HEAVEN for that event and it seemed everyone around me was whining and quitting the game and calling Blizzard, and yelling on the forums about it....
Was the biggest whinefest I have EVER seen, bar non, in any game EVER. So what does Blizzard do? They shorten the event....they take it down a notch and n00b-friendly it. GAG. Back to boring boring boring.
I doubt they'd ever even do something like that again because of all the bitching it caused. (And yes...I realize I'm talking about WoW here, but....I have to wonder how well "newbie" to MMORPG types would handle this realism in ANY game.)
The problem with the scourge event was that it sacrificed the gameplay experience of one part of the playerbase to enhance the gameplay experience of another part of the playerbase. Of course the people whose play experience was being sacrificed were really pissed. It was a classic 'rob Peter to pay Paul' scenario. It would be the equivalent of Blizzard turning off PvP for a month to 'enhance the PvE experience'. The PvPers would have every right to be seriously pissed. Heck, if you scale the idea up you end up with SWG and the NGE.
If the devs decide to change the rules of the game to enhance the gameplay of one part of the population, those whose gameplay is being sacrificed have a rigth to be angry and complain.
This reminded me of when I was playing WoW. There was this MASSIVE scourge event where people were getting killed by npcs left and right....it was interferring with their trips to the auction house and their mindless rep grinding and PEOPLE GOT SO PISSED that Blizzard had to end it.
Well that pissed ME OFF enough to quit the game. Because I LOVED the event. It made WoW seem ALIVE! It was actually DANGEROUS to try to get to a flight path. Your "safe city" was no longer always safe. You might get attacked by a zombie and become a zombie and have to attack other people to survive, or die even...and be forced to "waste time" because of dying. I was in HEAVEN for that event and it seemed everyone around me was whining and quitting the game and calling Blizzard, and yelling on the forums about it....
Was the biggest whinefest I have EVER seen, bar non, in any game EVER. So what does Blizzard do? They shorten the event....they take it down a notch and n00b-friendly it. GAG. Back to boring boring boring.
I doubt they'd ever even do something like that again because of all the bitching it caused. (And yes...I realize I'm talking about WoW here, but....I have to wonder how well "newbie" to MMORPG types would handle this realism in ANY game.)
The problem with the scourge event was that it sacrificed the gameplay experience of one part of the playerbase to enhance the gameplay experience of another part of the playerbase. Of course the people whose play experience was being sacrificed were really pissed. It was a classic 'rob Peter to pay Paul' scenario. It would be the equivalent of Blizzard turning off PvP for a month to 'enhance the PvE experience'. The PvPers would have every right to be seriously pissed. Heck, if you scale the idea up you end up with SWG and the NGE.
If the devs decide to change the rules of the game to enhance the gameplay of one part of the population, those whose gameplay is being sacrificed have a rigth to be angry and complain.
Complain because for a few DAYS one segment of the population gets what they want?? Seriously....is everyone that plays WoW an only child or something? You can't always JUST have your way. It's not only OKAY to share....it's a character strength to sacrifice sometimes so someone else can have some joy.....
Sure...if you call grinding rep and playing the AH "gameplay," I agree. People just hate to have to slow down in that game to experience the journey at all. It's allllllllllll about "end game." Pffft. And for some of us, that has RUINED the game. And some of us that feel that way.....have been paying Blizzard for FIVE years. I think we deserve some consideration too.
Some people play MMORPGs for the journey, NOT for the "end game." The zombie invasion was a great dose of excitement and unpredicatability on the journey. It only pissed off the people that weren't interested in adventure or the journey itself. They were "busy" with competing and barreling to end game. /gag, choke, puke Frankly....I think the "rest of us" deserve to occassionally have things "our way" too.
Funny thing is, this is what makes WoW the most popular MMO, and the most ANNOYING to some of us. Blizzard wants to please ALL of the people.....ALL of the time. And frankly, that's just not possible, and in the end, it makes for a weakened game that is much less of a dynamic experience for EVERYONE, than what it could be. Some people are more interested in the non-game parts of the game, than in the experience, the lore, the journey, and it being a dynamic, living, changing world. They don't care....they have EMBLEMS to earn and mats to put on the AH for their own personal price gouging war. And Blizzard has always done a pretty great job catering to "that crowd." Then ONE time they try to throw something in to make the world alive and dynamic for that "other" part of the crowd.....and the crowd that usually gets their way....whine about it.
You know, I didn't always enjoy every part of WoW either, but if they added some new PvP thing for the PvPers....I didn't whine endlessly about it. If they added anything for any OTHER group of people...I never went on the forums and complained. Maybe what they could have done....is allow people to "opt in" for the experience of the zombie invasion and people that didn't opt in....could have been immune. Afterall....we must all be allowed to choose what happens and what we participate in. Kind of like throwing your PvP flag. They should probably have an "I've opted in for dynamic content" flag.
Well...more power to them, I suppose (the non-dynamic-adventure-crowd). But their inability to actually open up to experiencing new things in the game, will little by little eat away at the appeal of the game over time. It's already doing that. Sure, WoW will probably have the most subscribers of any MMO for years and years to come, but Blizzard will always be in a stranglehold by the people that refuse to open their mind to try NEW things, so the game will stagnate eventually. As long as part of the player base holds the developers in bondage, their creativity will be muffled at the least and thwarted completely at the worst. For me....and many others....it's already doing that.
I can't agree more with the OP. I've been using computers for more than 20 years and MMO are probably the domain that makes me think very often: "OMG, if I had the programming abilities, I would change this crap and make it THIS way". Of course I don't have the programming skills to modify an MMO.
What the OP is asking for is probably very heavy in programming, it would re
This reminded me of when I was playing WoW. There was this MASSIVE scourge event where people were getting killed by npcs left and right....it was interferring with their trips to the auction house and their mindless rep grinding and PEOPLE GOT SO PISSED that Blizzard had to end it.
Well that pissed ME OFF enough to quit the game. Because I LOVED the event. It made WoW seem ALIVE! It was actually DANGEROUS to try to get to a flight path. Your "safe city" was no longer always safe. You might get attacked by a zombie and become a zombie and have to attack other people to survive, or die even...and be forced to "waste time" because of dying. I was in HEAVEN for that event and it seemed everyone around me was whining and quitting the game and calling Blizzard, and yelling on the forums about it....
Was the biggest whinefest I have EVER seen, bar non, in any game EVER. So what does Blizzard do? They shorten the event....they take it down a notch and n00b-friendly it. GAG. Back to boring boring boring.
I doubt they'd ever even do something like that again because of all the bitching it caused. (And yes...I realize I'm talking about WoW here, but....I have to wonder how well "newbie" to MMORPG types would handle this realism in ANY game.)
The problem with the scourge event was that it sacrificed the gameplay experience of one part of the playerbase to enhance the gameplay experience of another part of the playerbase. Of course the people whose play experience was being sacrificed were really pissed. It was a classic 'rob Peter to pay Paul' scenario. It would be the equivalent of Blizzard turning off PvP for a month to 'enhance the PvE experience'. The PvPers would have every right to be seriously pissed. Heck, if you scale the idea up you end up with SWG and the NGE.
If the devs decide to change the rules of the game to enhance the gameplay of one part of the population, those whose gameplay is being sacrificed have a rigth to be angry and complain.
Complain because for a few DAYS one segment of the population gets what they want?? Seriously....is everyone that plays WoW an only child or something? You can't always JUST have your way. It's not only OKAY to share....it's a character strength to sacrifice sometimes so someone else can have some joy.....
Sure...if you call grinding rep and playing the AH "gameplay," I agree. People just hate to have to slow down in that game to experience the journey at all. It's allllllllllll about "end game." Pffft. And for some of us, that has RUINED the game. And some of us that feel that way.....have been paying Blizzard for FIVE years. I think we deserve some consideration too.
Some people play MMORPGs for the journey, NOT for the "end game." The zombie invasion was a great dose of excitement and unpredicatability on the journey. It only pissed off the people that weren't interested in adventure or the journey itself. They were "busy" with competing and barreling to end game. /gag, choke, puke Frankly....I think the "rest of us" deserve to occassionally have things "our way" too.
Funny thing is, this is what makes WoW the most popular MMO, and the most ANNOYING to some of us. Blizzard wants to please ALL of the people.....ALL of the time. And frankly, that's just not possible, and in the end, it makes for a weakened game that is much less of a dynamic experience for EVERYONE, than what it could be. Some people are more interested in the non-game parts of the game, than in the experience, the lore, the journey, and it being a dynamic, living, changing world. They don't care....they have EMBLEMS to earn and mats to put on the AH for their own personal price gouging war. And Blizzard has always done a pretty great job catering to "that crowd." Then ONE time they try to throw something in to make the world alive and dynamic for that "other" part of the crowd.....and the crowd that usually gets their way....whine about it.
You know, I didn't always enjoy every part of WoW either, but if they added some new PvP thing for the PvPers....I didn't whine endlessly about it. If they added anything for any OTHER group of people...I never went on the forums and complained. Maybe what they could have done....is allow people to "opt in" for the experience of the zombie invasion and people that didn't opt in....could have been immune. Afterall....we must all be allowed to choose what happens and what we participate in. Kind of like throwing your PvP flag. They should probably have an "I've opted in for dynamic content" flag.
Well...more power to them, I suppose (the non-dynamic-adventure-crowd). But their inability to actually open up to experiencing new things in the game, will little by little eat away at the appeal of the game over time. It's already doing that. Sure, WoW will probably have the most subscribers of any MMO for years and years to come, but Blizzard will always be in a stranglehold by the people that refuse to open their mind to try NEW things, so the game will stagnate eventually. As long as part of the player base holds the developers in bondage, their creativity will be muffled at the least and thwarted completely at the worst. For me....and many others....it's already doing that.
The complaining was not that a segment of the player base got extra content but that another segment of the player base got content take away from them. I really do not consider running around as a zombie infecting people to be much of 'gameplay' but I was more then willing to share the game with those that did. However, the 'zombie people' were not willing to share with the others. They took over vital parts of the cities and were unwilling to let others conduct 'business as normal'. It is this selfishness that really pissed me off. There was nothing revolutionary about the zombie event and everyone knew that it would only last about a week so why did they have to be such dicks about it? What right did they have to make it so unnecessirly difficult for me to continue on my 'journey' in the game? Couldn't hey have just slowed down and enjoyed themselves rather than becoming a pain to people who did not share their preferences?
1.One Seemless Virtual World with no instances and 2.Dynamic Random content which affects the world.
Right now they don't go together,The level of programming that it will have the those two things together is silly.People don't realize the amount of content that would have to be in game like that.When people end up playing and have nothing to do they will realize why wow and other mmo are making the choices they do for example Let pretend they 6 unique dragons a game,and guild set out to kill them all.The thing is it summer time and guild is made up of high schoolers and college students so they have unlimited time so in a space of week,They have killed all dragons because they where playing 12-14 hour playing sessions.You only have 2-3 hours a day to play or One Guild whose goal is just make thing miserable for everybody,They set out to kill every important npc and unique monster in game.In space of week they slaughter many of the important npc in most of the cities,In month they have killed most of unique monsters. Dynamic Content often mean you will have nothing to do because somebody did or waiting around until the content come back again.Instances and phasing have their place but they are certain players who seemless world and i hope they get it but we all ready know is going to happen players are going to complain about nothing to do or long wait times for monsters that is why the games change from that model in first place.Hopeful one of these day the tech catches up or their is large enough company willing to constantly fill a game with content but until then instances and phasing will be best way having dynamic changing world.
Someone is putting words into my mouth. I'd like to set that record straight.
His first point of me looking for "One Seemless Virtual World with no instances" Where did I say that? I'm not telling the developer how to build a game, only that I would like to see a world that does not repeat the same thing every day endlessly. I'd like to see a world that moves forward with time.
His second point, "dynamic random content that affects the world' is also incorrect. I'd like to see new content based off of a changing world. Random does not have to come into it, though I'm not precluding some generated content. And as to affecting the world, all I'm asking for is the feeling that what I do matters in some fashion, that the world does not always reset to the same exact moment three minutes after everything I do. Everything I'm asking for is possible. The issue is not whether it can be done, it's whether some developer will make the effort, and more importantly, whether some publisher will stick their neck out and back them. I know, that's the impossible part... or at least, unlikely.
The complaining was not that a segment of the player base got extra content but that another segment of the player base got content take away from them. I really do not consider running around as a zombie infecting people to be much of 'gameplay' but I was more then willing to share the game with those that did. However, the 'zombie people' were not willing to share with the others. They took over vital parts of the cities and were unwilling to let others conduct 'business as normal'. It is this selfishness that really pissed me off. There was nothing revolutionary about the zombie event and everyone knew that it would only last about a week so why did they have to be such dicks about it? What right did they have to make it so unnecessirly difficult for me to continue on my 'journey' in the game? Couldn't hey have just slowed down and enjoyed themselves rather than becoming a pain to people who did not share their preferences?
Like I said....perhaps Blizzard, in keeping to their "make everyone happy" policy, should have made an "opt in for dynamic content" flag or something, explaining that things might occur, should you choose to opt in, that could disrupt your usual schedule. I think that would have gone over a lot better.
Someone is putting words into my mouth. I'd like to set that record straight.
His first point of me looking for "One Seemless Virtual World with no instances" Where did I say that? I'm not telling the developer how to build a game, only that I would like to see a world that does not repeat the same thing every day endlessly. I'd like to see a world that moves forward with time.
His second point, "dynamic random content that affects the world' is also incorrect. I'd like to see new content based off of a changing world. Random does not have to come into it, though I'm not precluding some generated content. And as to affecting the world, all I'm asking for is the feeling that what I do matters in some fashion, that the world does not always reset to the same exact moment three minutes after everything I do. Everything I'm asking for is possible. The issue is not whether it can be done, it's whether some developer will make the effort, and more importantly, whether some publisher will stick their neck out and back them. I know, that's the impossible part... or at least, unlikely.
The complaining was not that a segment of the player base got extra content but that another segment of the player base got content take away from them. I really do not consider running around as a zombie infecting people to be much of 'gameplay' but I was more then willing to share the game with those that did. However, the 'zombie people' were not willing to share with the others. They took over vital parts of the cities and were unwilling to let others conduct 'business as normal'. It is this selfishness that really pissed me off. There was nothing revolutionary about the zombie event and everyone knew that it would only last about a week so why did they have to be such dicks about it? What right did they have to make it so unnecessirly difficult for me to continue on my 'journey' in the game? Couldn't hey have just slowed down and enjoyed themselves rather than becoming a pain to people who did not share their preferences?
Like I said....perhaps Blizzard, in keeping to their "make everyone happy" policy, should have made an "opt in for dynamic content" flag or something, explaining that things might occur, should you choose to opt in, that could disrupt your usual schedule. I think that would have gone over a lot better.
The problem was the players that were taking the event too far. The plague and ghouls were being used by numerous players to outright grief others, follow them around, and kill them. I'm sure it was the worst for new WoW players as well, since I saw a huge number of ghouled players in the lowbie/starter areas repeatedly infecting and rez killing new characters.
Don't blame people complaining, or for blizzard from removing it. The intended design of the event was fine. The problem was the players who abused the mechanics of it, and used it as an excuse to terrorize other players and ruin their fun.
We do not repeat the same day, time moves forward. You do not kill the same things over and over, no monsters pop back into existence in CoS. Everything does not stay in the same place, and each day is a new day. The same guy does not hand out the same lame quest. First, our quests are far from 'lame' and second, NPCs are not given quests to hand out to every player. Time has meaning and players do have impact on the world. In our world, time moves forward and tomorrow is always different than today.
I'd say we fit the bill quite nicely.
How do you handle multiple players grouping who are on different stages (chapters, decision points) of a quest? Does each player "see" their own version of the world? Can one player who has done a particular story aid another in finishing it?
If things do not respawn, what method do you have to prevent griefing by resource destruction? (This has been an issue in Tale In The Desert). That is, let's assume part of the overarching story arc is getting rid of some orcs. You design and balance the orc population so that everyone with the quest/on the story/whatever will have enough orcs to kill. I'm bored, so I get all of my friends together and we do nothing but kill orcs, until there aren't any. What happens to the people on the quest?
If you're using instancing, so that when you get the quest to "kill orcs", you go into your own private orc village and kill them, how is this a "dynamic" world? (I guess you could do something like "When 100 people have done 'Clear the Orc Village', the entrance to the Orc Village instance vanishes and is replaced by "Ruined Orc Village", with associated new storylines. Sort of sucks if someone still had the "Clear the Orc Village" quest, though.)
Obviously, without knowledge of your engine, I'm using generic terms which might not be perfectly applicable, but the concepts should be valid for any multiplayer game.
The problem was the players that were taking the event too far. The plague and ghouls were being used by numerous players to outright grief others, follow them around, and kill them. I'm sure it was the worst for new WoW players as well, since I saw a huge number of ghouled players in the lowbie/starter areas repeatedly infecting and rez killing new characters. Don't blame people complaining, or for blizzard from removing it. The intended design of the event was fine. The problem was the players who abused the mechanics of it, and used it as an excuse to terrorize other players and ruin their fun.
What? Players using their ability to influence the world to harass/grief other players????
The problem was the players that were taking the event too far. The plague and ghouls were being used by numerous players to outright grief others, follow them around, and kill them. I'm sure it was the worst for new WoW players as well, since I saw a huge number of ghouled players in the lowbie/starter areas repeatedly infecting and rez killing new characters. Don't blame people complaining, or for blizzard from removing it. The intended design of the event was fine. The problem was the players who abused the mechanics of it, and used it as an excuse to terrorize other players and ruin their fun.
What? Players using their ability to influence the world to harass/grief other players????
Inconceivable!
The ghoul plague in no way influenced the game world in a meaningful manner. It was a temporary mechanic that simply allowed players to circumvent regular game mechanics which prevented them from killing NPCs and other players of the same faction. It did not serve to do anything more than allow some players to negatively influence other players by killing them or killing important NPCs otherwise unable to be killed.
The biggest issue with the whole thing was that ghouled players could attack, infect, or even kill players of the same faction on non-PvP servers.
Comments
Also, you mentioned that we couldn't appease the OP. Let's take a look at his original post as compared to the game we are building in CoS.
We do not repeat the same day, time moves forward. You do not kill the same things over and over, no monsters pop back into existence in CoS. Everything does not stay in the same place, and each day is a new day. The same guy does not hand out the same lame quest. First, our quests are far from 'lame' and second, NPCs are not given quests to hand out to every player. Time has meaning and players do have impact on the world. In our world, time moves forward and tomorrow is always different than today.
I'd say we fit the bill quite nicely.
You played the card, so you know the next question:
What developers are working on this project?
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
@OP: I understand where you are coming from.
There's a little problem though: development costs.
Say an average MMO contains 1000 quests. Now this is a fixed, non dynamic, world. Like you say, each day it is the same all over.
The closest system I can think of would be to allow change of the world on a local basis. The problem is though that if one really wants a changing world, then after I take my first mission, that mission should cease to exist and another should take its place.
Now imagine about 10.000 players on a server (just a big guess in this case), they all pass through the same NPC that is supposed to supply them with a 'unique' quest. That would already be 10.000 quests from ONE NPC. Obviously no developer will be willing to invest that kind of money in any game.
I can imagine a mechanic like this though:
Quest 1: NPC asks player to attack village and burn it down.
Quest 2: NPC (2) asks player to help put out the fire.
Quest 3: NPC (2) asks player to help rebuild the town.
Quest 1:...... etc.
Give it a nice twist and based upon the player's actions they align themselves towards evil or good.
In a PvE setting, I think this will be the closest one will get to a 'changing' or evolving world. But still, that is 3 times the development costs of a quest, as opposed to the persistant world model.
Like others said, the best you can get in these days MMOs is PvP where the outcome actually influences the world (someone conquers a town, which has an effect on the world).
Then there are GM ran events that change the game world. But also those cost lost of development time, so those will not be very frequent.
One way or another, I don't see this progressing world happen anytime soon. Maybe in 10-20 years from now, but in the near future I think we will have to settle for the old fashion model for a while to come still.
Peter Molyneux, is that you?
No offense but I'll believe it when I see it. Although I wish you all the best on your game and hope you guys do pull off everything you're saying in your posts. All the more power to you but frankly I'm tired of all the baloney devs go on about their game is going to have, and then you get into the game and it doesn't live up to the hype.
Of course, here's hoping you or someone does. Certainly not against the possibility.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
Yes, with our present technology...I think I have to agree. (Although there is a developer in this very thread that says...we're wrong...and that's actually a good and hopeful thing!)
Funny thing is....the ONLY new game that I have heard of with plans to do this is Alganon where the GMs ARE in the game all the time and there are plans for GM run events, as well as the GMs playing the various deities in the game, of which one will have to choose the deity they will worship. Your choice will determine various things/quests, etc. that you get that someone who worships another deity will not. (I just re-read the thread and see that some other games, like Citadel of Sorcery, also intend to do this, so maybe all hope isn't lost for developers to try this sort of thing again.)
And of COURSE....Alganon, because of being released too early (not finished), various alpha and beta level bugs still present, and some people comparing it visually to WoW, so much as to call it a CLONE....has been dogged to such a high degree on MMORPG.com, that most people here wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole now.
I wonder if we'll be willing to give it another chance when they implement the GM run content?
Just a thought. Because I certainly see a lot of things hoped for on these forums, but when indie devs attempt to actually DO those things, quite often their games get run into the dirt for the imperfections rather than anything worthy they may have done being complimented. Think Darkfall..... yeah, people STILL love to dog that game, and yet....if you go back to the days before it's release.... people were whining for many of the features it HAS.
I'm not sure gamers are EVER happy and content.
Maybe what we all need is to take a BREAK from gaming and go "play" a REAL LIFE for a while. There are plenty of adventures there to be had, and with REAL risk and reward too.
I'm just sayin'....
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
How bout GMs earn the money we pay them? Go possess some NPC and create some dynamic situation like attack the town. Kill some noobs. Drop some great loot when you die
Kill some noobs... wow, if there's anything a player would like more than getting ganked by another player, it would be getting ganked by a GM. They may as well put a cancel button on the hotbar.
You know, I keep seeing this meme, and I keep wondering what the people who promote it are smoking.
"You know what would be COOL? If, like, these MONSTERS appeared in some city, and, like THEY KILLED EVERYONE and there'd be, like, bodies everywhere and stuff, and, like, no one could shop or trade or finish quests or craft 'cause there'd be ALL THESE MONSTERS and then it would be SO AWESOME!"
Reply from the Usual Suspects:" But then everyone would team up to fight the monsters!"
Reply from Reality ('cause I've seen this shit pulled in UO, back in Ye Oldene Dayse):"No, most of the players will just log off, and of those who don't, they'll either leave the city until the stupidity is over or randomly run around looting bodies after using AOE to 'tag' as many monsters as possible. That's assuming the entire thing doesn't cause a lagfest that crashes the server."
Generally, this sort of stuff works only if it's a scheduled, planned, event and everyone knows about it and is ready for it. Even then, it's a crapshoot as to how the player base (and the server) will react. It's not something you can do every day. ("Oh, it's Tuesday? Time for the dragons to attack.")
A huge number of posters on this board, despite often whining about "instancing" and "community" seem to forget a typical MMORPG needs 250K players, minimum, to survive, let alone thrive. When proposing any "great new cool awesome idea", they need to stop asking "Would *I* find this cool?" or "Would me and MY BUDDIES find this cool?" but, "Would the vast majority of the players find this cool, given the huge variance in playstyles, playtime, and skill levels, and, of chose who don't find it cool, how many would find it uncool enough that they'd quit?"
This reminded me of when I was playing WoW. There was this MASSIVE scourge event where people were getting killed by npcs left and right....it was interferring with their trips to the auction house and their mindless rep grinding and PEOPLE GOT SO PISSED that Blizzard had to end it.
Well that pissed ME OFF enough to quit the game. Because I LOVED the event. It made WoW seem ALIVE! It was actually DANGEROUS to try to get to a flight path. Your "safe city" was no longer always safe. You might get attacked by a zombie and become a zombie and have to attack other people to survive, or die even...and be forced to "waste time" because of dying. I was in HEAVEN for that event and it seemed everyone around me was whining and quitting the game and calling Blizzard, and yelling on the forums about it....
Was the biggest whinefest I have EVER seen, bar non, in any game EVER. So what does Blizzard do? They shorten the event....they take it down a notch and n00b-friendly it. GAG. Back to boring boring boring.
I doubt they'd ever even do something like that again because of all the bitching it caused. (And yes...I realize I'm talking about WoW here, but....I have to wonder how well "newbie" to MMORPG types would handle this realism in ANY game.)
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
Ryzom, however, is also a sandbox, that I've heard, has very little actual content. Lots of crafting though, I hear, and some other things that sound wonderful. Players, really is seemed, have to create their own game, more or less. But to be honest....I played it for only a few hours and was terribly bored. I kept playing only a few days total. The interface is so flippin' complicated, that half the time I was in game I was asking questions in community chat that would have been entirely unnecessary with a better interface. I mean, FFS, UO is years and years old, and I never had to ask how to use the interface.
There aren't (or weren't apparent to me, anyway) a lot of quests really, so it for sure seemed "sandboxy." I generally like a sandbox type game, having come from Ultima Online originally, but....you know....I'd really like maybe just a LITTLE more than a bucket and shovel in my sandbox.
However...to each their own. I'm sure Ryzom is THE perfect game for some, otherwise it would have died long ago.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
I agree with your sentiment. Random, well orchestrated events are the next step in the evolution of MMOs. Not instancing a player to death, not PvP by itself (though a random event that involves PvP certainly is), and not constant expansions that provide more linear content for a player to burn through. Minor cities (those not being the hubs of trade or the starting cities for a player) SHOULD be randomly attacked and invaded (with only short warning), and it SHOULD be up to the players to assure their world isn't overrun by, essentially, the players' apathy. If you're too busy leveling your character and farming for your gear to worry about the effects these invasions would have on parts of the world not immediately pertinent to you, maybe you should be playing a singleplayer game, where there are no other players and every invasion is slated to start the moment it becomes ultimately pertinent to you. Though, that isn't to say these events shouldn't provide players with some kind of reward for participating.
Maybe a better term is semi-random. Not all these events should come with only an hour's warning. If a major, integral city is going to be attacked, the players should have a couple days' notice that an army is marching on their capital, and a projected time as to when that army will reach the gates. The largest problem with this currently is the latency and performance issues, but there are all sorts of neat ways to circumvent these problems. For example, segment the besieged city into quarters (or more), and they essentially become shards a couple hundred players can enter to defend their city from the invasion. To explain this through lore, one would need to simply deny a player access to a full "shard" by displaying a message such as, "This area of the city is well-fortified, maybe it would be best to see if another part of the city could use your help.."
As Jatar has implied, there are no impossibilities. Only challenges to overcome.
Edited for grammar.
This made me laugh.
EVE definitely is NOT for everyone. I don't even enjoy the whole science fiction spaceship genre, but I played it for a good while just to stretch myself into looking at other styles within the genre.
It's probably a great thing that EVE's player base loves their game so much. Personally, I think a love for the game you're actively playing is a GOOD thing, and that includes those who are playing and loving WoW, EQ2, LotRO, GW, Aion, or whatever else. But the EVE crowd does have a tendency, it seems, to always show up and say how their game is far superior to this, that, and the other, in almost every thread. LOL
Funny. =D
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
I hope your company will tell the whiny kids to shove it up their collective asses.
Im glad you caught the Irony of my last statment. Yes GIRLs play WoW... this to me is one of its largest selling points and the single factor that it now has 10m subs. Like all the good designer decisions that Blizzard made this was the best one for sure. Dudes go where there are girls pure and simple. A Nigh club can be the best in the world but if there are no girls it will go under. Make a a game for girls and boys will play it just to meet them. This should be in all new mmo makers minds, how to make an mmo that girls would like to play.
The irony of this thread the OP probably wants
1.One Seemless Virtual World with no instances
and
2.Dynamic Random content which affects the world.
Right now they don't go together,The level of programming that it will have the those two things together is silly.People don't realize the amount of content that would have to be in game like that.When people end up playing and have nothing to do they will realize why wow and other mmo are making the choices they do for example
Let pretend they 6 unique dragons a game,and guild set out to kill them all.The thing is it summer time and guild is made up of high schoolers and college students so they have unlimited time so in a space of week,They have killed all dragons because they where playing 12-14 hour playing sessions.You only have 2-3 hours a day to play
or
One Guild whose goal is just make thing miserable for everybody,They set out to kill every important npc and unique monster in game.In space of week they slaughter many of the important npc in most of the cities,In month they have killed most of unique monsters.
Dynamic Content often mean you will have nothing to do because somebody did or waiting around until the content come back again.Instances and phasing have their place but they are certain players who seemless world and i hope they get it but we all ready know is going to happen players are going to complain about nothing to do or long wait times for monsters that is why the games change from that model in first place.Hopeful one of these day the tech catches up or their is large enough company willing to constantly fill a game with content but until then instances and phasing will be best way having dynamic changing world.
Also, you mentioned that we couldn't appease the OP. Let's take a look at his original post as compared to the game we are building in CoS.
We do not repeat the same day, time moves forward. You do not kill the same things over and over, no monsters pop back into existence in CoS. Everything does not stay in the same place, and each day is a new day. The same guy does not hand out the same lame quest. First, our quests are far from 'lame' and second, NPCs are not given quests to hand out to every player. Time has meaning and players do have impact on the world. In our world, time moves forward and tomorrow is always different than today.
I'd say we fit the bill quite nicely.
Actually, I was referring to Ceradin, which is where the quote came from. At this point, I'll have to leave it to both of them to voice their own opinion.
Thing is, you still haven't described how your players will have an impact on the world, other than their own "reflected world". How does what an individual player or group in their "reflected world" have an impact on the "reflected world" of others, or the "real world" that they share outside the "reflected worlds"? Please provide an example.
On the other side of things, how do you deal with the issues Lizard_sf spoke of? I get halfway through a quest(save the princess) and have to log off. I log on a week later. Is it possible my quest will no longer be finishable? Has the princess been saved by someone else/executed due to my inactions? Or does time pass in my "reflected world" based on my own time spent? If so, how do you sync the events and consequences of my character in the "real" gaming world? If you don't sync the events, how do you create a cohesive, relevant story from 10's of thousands of gaming worlds in which time has not progressed evenly?
I bid you luck and hope your game gets released. If you read my posts here and elsewhere you'd know I like solo friendly games and have little issue with instanced content. But until the rubber hits the road and you have 10's of thousands of people logging onto your servers playing through your content, I can't help but to be skeptical about the game. Particularly when its website spends most of its time criticizing "other games" and little time explaining how gameplay will work in its own game.
Peter Molyneux, is that you?
No offense but I'll believe it when I see it. Although I wish you all the best on your game and hope you guys do pull off everything you're saying in your posts. All the more power to you but frankly I'm tired of all the baloney devs go on about their game is going to have, and then you get into the game and it doesn't live up to the hype.
Of course, here's hoping you or someone does. Certainly not against the possibility.
Funny you'd say that. The game design he's talking about reminds me very much of Fable II, which I guess is why I'm skeptical. As a mostly single player game which other players can join, I can see how you can pull such a design off. But as a MMO, I don't see it from a practical point of view, and I certainly don't see realistically adding new content on a daily basis. It has nothing to do with whether it CAN be done, rather, whether doing it is a good idea, and will be a positive experience when you have 10's of thousands of people logged in.
The problem with the scourge event was that it sacrificed the gameplay experience of one part of the playerbase to enhance the gameplay experience of another part of the playerbase. Of course the people whose play experience was being sacrificed were really pissed. It was a classic 'rob Peter to pay Paul' scenario. It would be the equivalent of Blizzard turning off PvP for a month to 'enhance the PvE experience'. The PvPers would have every right to be seriously pissed. Heck, if you scale the idea up you end up with SWG and the NGE.
If the devs decide to change the rules of the game to enhance the gameplay of one part of the population, those whose gameplay is being sacrificed have a rigth to be angry and complain.
The problem with the scourge event was that it sacrificed the gameplay experience of one part of the playerbase to enhance the gameplay experience of another part of the playerbase. Of course the people whose play experience was being sacrificed were really pissed. It was a classic 'rob Peter to pay Paul' scenario. It would be the equivalent of Blizzard turning off PvP for a month to 'enhance the PvE experience'. The PvPers would have every right to be seriously pissed. Heck, if you scale the idea up you end up with SWG and the NGE.
If the devs decide to change the rules of the game to enhance the gameplay of one part of the population, those whose gameplay is being sacrificed have a rigth to be angry and complain.
Complain because for a few DAYS one segment of the population gets what they want?? Seriously....is everyone that plays WoW an only child or something? You can't always JUST have your way. It's not only OKAY to share....it's a character strength to sacrifice sometimes so someone else can have some joy.....
Sure...if you call grinding rep and playing the AH "gameplay," I agree. People just hate to have to slow down in that game to experience the journey at all. It's allllllllllll about "end game." Pffft. And for some of us, that has RUINED the game. And some of us that feel that way.....have been paying Blizzard for FIVE years. I think we deserve some consideration too.
Some people play MMORPGs for the journey, NOT for the "end game." The zombie invasion was a great dose of excitement and unpredicatability on the journey. It only pissed off the people that weren't interested in adventure or the journey itself. They were "busy" with competing and barreling to end game. /gag, choke, puke Frankly....I think the "rest of us" deserve to occassionally have things "our way" too.
Funny thing is, this is what makes WoW the most popular MMO, and the most ANNOYING to some of us. Blizzard wants to please ALL of the people.....ALL of the time. And frankly, that's just not possible, and in the end, it makes for a weakened game that is much less of a dynamic experience for EVERYONE, than what it could be. Some people are more interested in the non-game parts of the game, than in the experience, the lore, the journey, and it being a dynamic, living, changing world. They don't care....they have EMBLEMS to earn and mats to put on the AH for their own personal price gouging war. And Blizzard has always done a pretty great job catering to "that crowd." Then ONE time they try to throw something in to make the world alive and dynamic for that "other" part of the crowd.....and the crowd that usually gets their way....whine about it.
You know, I didn't always enjoy every part of WoW either, but if they added some new PvP thing for the PvPers....I didn't whine endlessly about it. If they added anything for any OTHER group of people...I never went on the forums and complained. Maybe what they could have done....is allow people to "opt in" for the experience of the zombie invasion and people that didn't opt in....could have been immune. Afterall....we must all be allowed to choose what happens and what we participate in. Kind of like throwing your PvP flag. They should probably have an "I've opted in for dynamic content" flag.
Well...more power to them, I suppose (the non-dynamic-adventure-crowd). But their inability to actually open up to experiencing new things in the game, will little by little eat away at the appeal of the game over time. It's already doing that. Sure, WoW will probably have the most subscribers of any MMO for years and years to come, but Blizzard will always be in a stranglehold by the people that refuse to open their mind to try NEW things, so the game will stagnate eventually. As long as part of the player base holds the developers in bondage, their creativity will be muffled at the least and thwarted completely at the worst. For me....and many others....it's already doing that.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
I can't agree more with the OP. I've been using computers for more than 20 years and MMO are probably the domain that makes me think very often: "OMG, if I had the programming abilities, I would change this crap and make it THIS way". Of course I don't have the programming skills to modify an MMO.
What the OP is asking for is probably very heavy in programming, it would re
The problem with the scourge event was that it sacrificed the gameplay experience of one part of the playerbase to enhance the gameplay experience of another part of the playerbase. Of course the people whose play experience was being sacrificed were really pissed. It was a classic 'rob Peter to pay Paul' scenario. It would be the equivalent of Blizzard turning off PvP for a month to 'enhance the PvE experience'. The PvPers would have every right to be seriously pissed. Heck, if you scale the idea up you end up with SWG and the NGE.
If the devs decide to change the rules of the game to enhance the gameplay of one part of the population, those whose gameplay is being sacrificed have a rigth to be angry and complain.
Complain because for a few DAYS one segment of the population gets what they want?? Seriously....is everyone that plays WoW an only child or something? You can't always JUST have your way. It's not only OKAY to share....it's a character strength to sacrifice sometimes so someone else can have some joy.....
Sure...if you call grinding rep and playing the AH "gameplay," I agree. People just hate to have to slow down in that game to experience the journey at all. It's allllllllllll about "end game." Pffft. And for some of us, that has RUINED the game. And some of us that feel that way.....have been paying Blizzard for FIVE years. I think we deserve some consideration too.
Some people play MMORPGs for the journey, NOT for the "end game." The zombie invasion was a great dose of excitement and unpredicatability on the journey. It only pissed off the people that weren't interested in adventure or the journey itself. They were "busy" with competing and barreling to end game. /gag, choke, puke Frankly....I think the "rest of us" deserve to occassionally have things "our way" too.
Funny thing is, this is what makes WoW the most popular MMO, and the most ANNOYING to some of us. Blizzard wants to please ALL of the people.....ALL of the time. And frankly, that's just not possible, and in the end, it makes for a weakened game that is much less of a dynamic experience for EVERYONE, than what it could be. Some people are more interested in the non-game parts of the game, than in the experience, the lore, the journey, and it being a dynamic, living, changing world. They don't care....they have EMBLEMS to earn and mats to put on the AH for their own personal price gouging war. And Blizzard has always done a pretty great job catering to "that crowd." Then ONE time they try to throw something in to make the world alive and dynamic for that "other" part of the crowd.....and the crowd that usually gets their way....whine about it.
You know, I didn't always enjoy every part of WoW either, but if they added some new PvP thing for the PvPers....I didn't whine endlessly about it. If they added anything for any OTHER group of people...I never went on the forums and complained. Maybe what they could have done....is allow people to "opt in" for the experience of the zombie invasion and people that didn't opt in....could have been immune. Afterall....we must all be allowed to choose what happens and what we participate in. Kind of like throwing your PvP flag. They should probably have an "I've opted in for dynamic content" flag.
Well...more power to them, I suppose (the non-dynamic-adventure-crowd). But their inability to actually open up to experiencing new things in the game, will little by little eat away at the appeal of the game over time. It's already doing that. Sure, WoW will probably have the most subscribers of any MMO for years and years to come, but Blizzard will always be in a stranglehold by the people that refuse to open their mind to try NEW things, so the game will stagnate eventually. As long as part of the player base holds the developers in bondage, their creativity will be muffled at the least and thwarted completely at the worst. For me....and many others....it's already doing that.
The complaining was not that a segment of the player base got extra content but that another segment of the player base got content take away from them. I really do not consider running around as a zombie infecting people to be much of 'gameplay' but I was more then willing to share the game with those that did. However, the 'zombie people' were not willing to share with the others. They took over vital parts of the cities and were unwilling to let others conduct 'business as normal'. It is this selfishness that really pissed me off. There was nothing revolutionary about the zombie event and everyone knew that it would only last about a week so why did they have to be such dicks about it? What right did they have to make it so unnecessirly difficult for me to continue on my 'journey' in the game? Couldn't hey have just slowed down and enjoyed themselves rather than becoming a pain to people who did not share their preferences?
Someone is putting words into my mouth. I'd like to set that record straight.
His first point of me looking for "One Seemless Virtual World with no instances" Where did I say that? I'm not telling the developer how to build a game, only that I would like to see a world that does not repeat the same thing every day endlessly. I'd like to see a world that moves forward with time.
His second point, "dynamic random content that affects the world' is also incorrect. I'd like to see new content based off of a changing world. Random does not have to come into it, though I'm not precluding some generated content. And as to affecting the world, all I'm asking for is the feeling that what I do matters in some fashion, that the world does not always reset to the same exact moment three minutes after everything I do. Everything I'm asking for is possible. The issue is not whether it can be done, it's whether some developer will make the effort, and more importantly, whether some publisher will stick their neck out and back them. I know, that's the impossible part... or at least, unlikely.
The complaining was not that a segment of the player base got extra content but that another segment of the player base got content take away from them. I really do not consider running around as a zombie infecting people to be much of 'gameplay' but I was more then willing to share the game with those that did. However, the 'zombie people' were not willing to share with the others. They took over vital parts of the cities and were unwilling to let others conduct 'business as normal'. It is this selfishness that really pissed me off. There was nothing revolutionary about the zombie event and everyone knew that it would only last about a week so why did they have to be such dicks about it? What right did they have to make it so unnecessirly difficult for me to continue on my 'journey' in the game? Couldn't hey have just slowed down and enjoyed themselves rather than becoming a pain to people who did not share their preferences?
Like I said....perhaps Blizzard, in keeping to their "make everyone happy" policy, should have made an "opt in for dynamic content" flag or something, explaining that things might occur, should you choose to opt in, that could disrupt your usual schedule. I think that would have gone over a lot better.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
Someone is putting words into my mouth. I'd like to set that record straight.
His first point of me looking for "One Seemless Virtual World with no instances" Where did I say that? I'm not telling the developer how to build a game, only that I would like to see a world that does not repeat the same thing every day endlessly. I'd like to see a world that moves forward with time.
His second point, "dynamic random content that affects the world' is also incorrect. I'd like to see new content based off of a changing world. Random does not have to come into it, though I'm not precluding some generated content. And as to affecting the world, all I'm asking for is the feeling that what I do matters in some fashion, that the world does not always reset to the same exact moment three minutes after everything I do. Everything I'm asking for is possible. The issue is not whether it can be done, it's whether some developer will make the effort, and more importantly, whether some publisher will stick their neck out and back them. I know, that's the impossible part... or at least, unlikely.
What do you think of Jatars game? Any opinions?
The complaining was not that a segment of the player base got extra content but that another segment of the player base got content take away from them. I really do not consider running around as a zombie infecting people to be much of 'gameplay' but I was more then willing to share the game with those that did. However, the 'zombie people' were not willing to share with the others. They took over vital parts of the cities and were unwilling to let others conduct 'business as normal'. It is this selfishness that really pissed me off. There was nothing revolutionary about the zombie event and everyone knew that it would only last about a week so why did they have to be such dicks about it? What right did they have to make it so unnecessirly difficult for me to continue on my 'journey' in the game? Couldn't hey have just slowed down and enjoyed themselves rather than becoming a pain to people who did not share their preferences?
Like I said....perhaps Blizzard, in keeping to their "make everyone happy" policy, should have made an "opt in for dynamic content" flag or something, explaining that things might occur, should you choose to opt in, that could disrupt your usual schedule. I think that would have gone over a lot better.
The problem was the players that were taking the event too far. The plague and ghouls were being used by numerous players to outright grief others, follow them around, and kill them. I'm sure it was the worst for new WoW players as well, since I saw a huge number of ghouled players in the lowbie/starter areas repeatedly infecting and rez killing new characters.
Don't blame people complaining, or for blizzard from removing it. The intended design of the event was fine. The problem was the players who abused the mechanics of it, and used it as an excuse to terrorize other players and ruin their fun.
How do you handle multiple players grouping who are on different stages (chapters, decision points) of a quest? Does each player "see" their own version of the world? Can one player who has done a particular story aid another in finishing it?
If things do not respawn, what method do you have to prevent griefing by resource destruction? (This has been an issue in Tale In The Desert). That is, let's assume part of the overarching story arc is getting rid of some orcs. You design and balance the orc population so that everyone with the quest/on the story/whatever will have enough orcs to kill. I'm bored, so I get all of my friends together and we do nothing but kill orcs, until there aren't any. What happens to the people on the quest?
If you're using instancing, so that when you get the quest to "kill orcs", you go into your own private orc village and kill them, how is this a "dynamic" world? (I guess you could do something like "When 100 people have done 'Clear the Orc Village', the entrance to the Orc Village instance vanishes and is replaced by "Ruined Orc Village", with associated new storylines. Sort of sucks if someone still had the "Clear the Orc Village" quest, though.)
Obviously, without knowledge of your engine, I'm using generic terms which might not be perfectly applicable, but the concepts should be valid for any multiplayer game.
What? Players using their ability to influence the world to harass/grief other players????
Inconceivable!
What? Players using their ability to influence the world to harass/grief other players????
Inconceivable!
The ghoul plague in no way influenced the game world in a meaningful manner. It was a temporary mechanic that simply allowed players to circumvent regular game mechanics which prevented them from killing NPCs and other players of the same faction. It did not serve to do anything more than allow some players to negatively influence other players by killing them or killing important NPCs otherwise unable to be killed.
The biggest issue with the whole thing was that ghouled players could attack, infect, or even kill players of the same faction on non-PvP servers.