Real Dark Nights

Ianoren

Just to show an example of what I mean of real dark nights from the game, Trials of Ascension, that inspired this post.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd-8hY6fuj0

True dark nights are certainly not completely new to MMOs, although not exactly common.  Everquest had them.  Mortal Online has a very similar system, but it is hardly as common in the more typical theme park MMO. Yet, I believe it adds a huge amount of advantages that add too much to the game to be ignored.

It Creates a Sense of Community: It makes it so players are taking shelter in settlements or camps during the nights and actually interacting.  This is probably an ideal time to be taking on job requests, doing different jobs needed to be complete within towns like constructions, blacksmithing or tailoring.  Can you imagine a virtual world where people are actually hanging out in the tavern and just talking?

Dangerous Traveling: Similarly, it makes traveling in parties much more important at night.  Since you cannot see the enemy from a distance, you know you need to outnumber and outclass them.  So it just adds more to that sense of community.  Of course there is always the options of taking a risk, so balancing that risk vs. reward just makes all your gaming decisions that much more important.

Night gives Advantages and Disadvantages: Night gives big advantages to bestial races that may have some form of night vision.  Whether you use it just to navigate more easily or to hunt down other players, it adds an interesting dynamic.  So now your chosen race actually matters that much more beyond how your character looks.  It also makes knowing the terrain and skills that increase your perception extremely important if you plan to travel at night or run away.

The Danger of Darkness: Under the cover of darkness you can mobilize armies, sneak into settlements, steal or raid.  In general it adds a sense of danger and unknown.  You never know who is watching you and using a torch just paints you as a big target for that PKer.

TL;DR:  I believe dark nights can add a lot to MMOs for the above bolded reasons.

So how do you feel about such a system added to the MMO genre or to other games in general?  What games felt like the implementation was done extremely well?

maplestone

Competitive play + client-enforced rules ==> client hack

That aside, I'm not wild about the darkness itself - I like the mood, I like variable world activity, but not actually losing vision.

redcapp

I'd love to see more of this.  Games need to take advantage of atmosphere much more than they do currently.

dinams

while i approve, a game needs to be created around this idea

 

Quirhid

Log in -> its night -> log out -> play something else.

grafh

Originally posted by Quirhid
Log in -> its night -> log out -> play something else.

I know i might catch flack for this, but thats not how you play a MMORPG. What your talking about is how to play an mmo.

I can think of lots of things to do during Night time like in the video.

1) stalk people who got caught in the dark

2) raid villages

3) hunt creatures that come out during the night

4) crafting

5) looking for new things

6) EXP

7) quests

8) basically anything i would normally do during the day...

jesad

Originally posted by maplestone

Competitive play + client-enforced rules ==> client hack

 

That is so messed up and at the same time so profoundly TRUE LOL.

I like the dark and I wish that it did work the way the OP describes it.  I played Mortal Online for a minute though and I can tell you that even walking around with a torch lit at night was like asking to be pked.  In the meanwhile, stumbling through the complete darkenss without even the slightest hint of nightvision, ambient light of the moon, or even the natural adjustment that the eyes do on their own is pretty much useless.  It was like literally trying to feel your way around a dark room only we all know that in an MMO, you can't really feel things the way you do in real life.  In other words, a bear has the same collision as the side of a building, and that's not good.

Axehilt

Originally posted by grafh

I know i might catch flack for this, but thats not how you play a MMORPG. What your talking about is how to play an mmo.

All MMORPGs are MMOs which are games.  All games are approached by players the same way: they're either fun, or they're not played.

You seem to be implying MMORPGs should be played unconditionally.  Keep playing no matter what. You hopefully understand that virtually nobody approaches games that way, and that it's actually an unhealthy way to play games (because you end up supporting games which aren't fun, encouraging developers to churn out mediocre designs.)

Axehilt

In reply to the thread itself, I do think night has potential in certain games.

It's automatically going to be bad if it's just straight-up dark night without mechanics around it (like Mortal Online appears to be.)  Because if the only function of night is making things hard to see, all you've really accomplished is turning off gameplay for the duration of night.  So it's a reduction of fun without any new or interesting gameplay really being introduced.

So you either need to be like Don't Starve, where there's always an overabundance of things to do during the night (and those things are fun core gameplay tasks you want to do anyway,) or you'd want to create a lot of unique gameplay around night.  With the latter you'd probably want a game where light and line of sight were central to the core gameplay at all times, not just night, but where night-time interacts with the core systems in an interesting way.

Eternal Sonata is one of the few games I know which incorporates shadow directly into gameplay which is an example of a game actually doing this (but it's kinda a weak example because I wasn't a huge fan of combat in that game overall.)  But basically portions of the battlefield were shadowed and while standing in them you had access to a certain set of abilities different from your light abilities, and shadows might change or be manipulated over the course of battle (although it's been a while and I didn't really play all that long, so I'm sure I'm not remembering this 100% accurately.)

grafh

Originally posted by Axehilt

Originally posted by grafh

I know i might catch flack for this, but thats not how you play a MMORPG. What your talking about is how to play an mmo.

All MMORPGs are MMOs which are games.  All games are approached by players the same way: they're either fun, or they're not played.

You seem to be implying MMORPGs should be played unconditionally.  Keep playing no matter what. You hopefully understand that virtually nobody approaches games that way, and that it's actually an unhealthy way to play games (because you end up supporting games which aren't fun, encouraging developers to churn out mediocre designs.)

I was implying this in a way.  To me MMORPG =/= MMO. 

To me, an MMORPG is a virtual world where you are suppose to be immersed in. Not playing because its night time seems a bit silly to me. Now i know each person is entitled to play a game the way they want, but i wouldnt do something like that.

I fail to see where this 'supporting games which arent fun' came from. I dont think thats relevant to my response. 

I loved playing FFXI. I hated it when it turned night and ghouls and other nasty undead creatures came out. They would always agro based on your health, and from far away also. I didnt like this feature alot when i first started. TO ME IT WAS A BAD DESIGN. After a while i saw the implications of it, and came to appreciate it. I didnt log out because it was night time, and because i thought it was stupid. When you decide to play an MMORPG, you are accepting everything the game has unconditionally. This is the good, the bad, and the ugly. Your job is to report the ugly or bad, start a petition, see if alot of others feel the same way you do. Cause in the end, who decides if a game is fun or mediocre? 

Axehilt

Originally posted by grafh

I was implying this in a way.  To me MMORPG =/= MMO. 

To me, an MMORPG is a virtual world where you are suppose to be immersed in. Not playing because its night time seems a bit silly to me. Now i know each person is entitled to play a game the way they want, but i wouldnt do something like that.

I fail to see where this 'supporting games which arent fun' came from. I dont think thats relevant to my response. 

I loved playing FFXI. I hated it when it turned night and ghouls and other nasty undead creatures came out. They would always agro based on your health, and from far away also. I didnt like this feature alot when i first started. TO ME IT WAS A BAD DESIGN. After a while i saw the implications of it, and came to appreciate it. I didnt log out because it was night time, and because i thought it was stupid. When you decide to play an MMORPG, you are accepting everything the game has unconditionally. This is the good, the bad, and the ugly. Your job is to report the ugly or bad, start a petition, see if alot of others feel the same way you do. Cause in the end, who decides if a game is fun or mediocre? 

Obviously MMORPG and MMO are different terms, but it doesn't require a Rocket Surgeon degree to understand that all MMORPGs are MMOs, but not all MMOs are MMORPGs, on account of what the acronyms mean:

• MMORPG: Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game
• MMO:       Massively Multiplayer Online

So the difference is obviously that MMORPGs are MMOs which are RPGs.

 

Virtual world is not heavily implied by that.  In the context of every videogame RPG (Final Fantasy, Ultima 3, Baldur's Gate, Mass Effect, etc) what you see is a pattern of games which do establish interesting worlds, but whose focus definitely is not virtual world simulation.  MMORPG merely implies you're going to be a MMO version of those types of games.

 

The 'supporting games which aren't fun' part came from the idea that "that's not how you play an MMORPG", which in isolation of your more recent post implies that he really should be suffering the night gameplay he dislikes, because that's how you play an MMORPG.

 

I do agree with what you're saying towards the end, that it's players' sort of "duty" to communicate likes/dislikes to developers -- but part of that starts before an idea is even fully formed.  Like, for example, a thread about Real Dark Nights where someone voices a dislike.  Especially given the OP hadn't really described interesting gameplay resulting from it.

Sovrath

I've often thought that there should be more use of darkness in these games. However, someone would just turn their monitor up and ruin the effect.

nariusseldon

Originally posted by Quirhid
Log in -> its night -> log out -> play something else.

This.

I don't play a video game to see nothing.

nariusseldon

Originally posted by grafh

Originally posted by Quirhid
Log in -> its night -> log out -> play something else.

I know i might catch flack for this, but thats not how you play a MMORPG. What your talking about is how to play an mmo.

I can think of lots of things to do during Night time like in the video.

1) stalk people who got caught in the dark

2) raid villages

3) hunt creatures that come out during the night

4) crafting

5) looking for new things

6) EXP

7) quests

8) basically anything i would normally do during the day...

You can do all those days in day time.

nariusseldon

Originally posted by grafh

To me, an MMORPG is a virtual world where you are suppose to be immersed in. Not playing because its night time seems a bit silly to me. Now i know each person is entitled to play a game the way they want, but i wouldnt do something like that.

How about "not playing because it is not fun"?

A game has many parts .. he is just pointing out that the night time part is not fun, and he does not want to play it.

That is no different than if i don't like dungeon x, i just won't queue for it. Except, of course, the only way not play night time is to log out.