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MMORPG with catastrophic weather/climate events.
corruptMind
Member UncommonPosts: 5
I don't know if this has been brought up but why don't they make "living" worlds with some kinda of wipe events( floods, earthquakes, tsunami, tornadoes, volcano's.. etc...) that happen not all the time but frequently enough. I know WoW Cataclysm was kinda like that but I am thinking more like a SWG open world kinda game that has natural events that just fuck shit up so you have to rebuild cities and creates more dynamic living. I know Crowfall kinda has this idea but not in the same manner. A lot of people would probably be pissed if their hard earned shit would get wiped but wouldn't it just make it more interesting? Does the tech even exist? Thoughts?
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I think it's more fun in theory then in practice. Even the act of adventuring in a truly pitch black dungeon is horrible for the player. You end up squinting at a torch graphic for hours on end wishing you were playing anything else. The same goes for fog, it's not fun not seeing 5ft in front of you. That's why weather is generally a non issue in most gamers, it's really annoying to play in.
If you think about it, having realistic weather would ruin every game. Snow would reduce your movement speed by 80%. Heavy rainfall in a grassy gnoll would cause everything you do to have a 50% chance of you falling down. That's not even considering natural disasters like Hurricanes, Tornadoes and Typhoon's, in which case you mine as well log off.
I'd play it. You're now hired to make a MMO with the weather conditions you described!
Yes i like the idea to a point,however NOT an auto wipe.The true premise of a ROLE play game is that character's would at least attempt a cure or to survive,it would not be an automated life.
Then i need to see it done right and not cheap.Example for several months leading up we would need to see and feel the tremors before the Earthquakes.We would need to see the oceans come alive with high winds and tides and see the skies fill with darkness and clouds.
It is all doable,very much so doable,it just shows how lazy developer's are and how little they are willing to do in game design.I have seen some small tidbits ,example FFXIV has the darkness and weather.
This is why i always use the term DEPTH.Once we have weather and seasons and skies and winds ect ect,then we should see the results in the game world.Your Fireball would suffer in high winds and rain days and dusty days.Your Thunderbolts would be more powerful on those days.Viruses would be more relavent during warm/hot days than cold ones/freezing ones.
Your ranged attacks would lose a LOT of accuracy on windy days and a little on rainy days,then you multiply that by distance of the ranged attacked.
There is so much a developer can do to create a living world BEFORE they start adding meaningless quests and mobs to support those useless quests.It seems more and more that developers THINK the ONLY reason behind a mmorpg is to beat it and create leveling tools to do so.
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It sounds like the game mechanic is having the intended effect. In both cases you are feeling paranoid/fearful that something might jump out of the dark or the mist. I wouldn't imagine having difficulty seeing in the dark or in the fog would be a fun experience. I don't believe it is supposed to be, but conquering said area will have a greater feeling of satisfaction when it is completed then if you can easily see everything which makes it easier and doesn't create the same sense of foreboding.
The people here get so worked up about player greiefers, do we really need the environment to grief them too?
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That's a huge part of what sets the stage IMO. A dark and foreboding forest isn't very foreboding if it isn't dark.
ahh i remember the 1 time i saw a tornado in FFXI , was just a graphic , but still was awesome
Dinosaur Extinction!
Active and erupting VOLCANOES!! Ash clouds, liquid magma, meteors from the sky slamming down to cause craters and earthquakes.
Best use of weather/climate I can think of
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So in Dks2 they had areas like this, the gutter was pitch black and you had to light a torch and light lanterns along the way. It wasn't a bad mechanic to have in just one level, the effect was pretty neat - but the community was really really split on how they felt about it.
There was also a fog area where you pretty much couldn't see in front of you, plus they added invisible enemies. Most people just sprinted through to the other side and ignored it because they couldn't be bothered trying to fight invisible enemies in the fog. I'm betting people would have been okay with it if the enemies were a bit more visible.
I would probably enjoy severe weather effects in a game, but the game would have to be conducive to that playstyle, the typical run up to mob, punch it a few times, pick up loot and run to next mob gameplay would not be fun by adding difficult terrain.
I actually thought darkness was pretty nat in the older games as long as you limit it. If all dungeons always are pitch black it gets annoying but if many have torches in some or all areas while a few are dark it actually gets exiting.
Same thing with fog, if it happens every now and then (as well as it spawns certain mobs with loot you can't get anywhere else) it works, but as it limits the mainly ranged classes You can't have thick fog every other day.
Having snow limit movement speed of players who aren't using skies or something similar actually aren't that bad. I wouldn't limit it with 80% though but 50% would just add a spice to the game and you sould always use skies or a mount.
Severe weather effects can be fun as long as you make them pretty rare and give out some bonus during them. Maybe a rare crafting mat flower only blooms during a storm or a certain boss only spawns during a Blizzard. It adds a bit of variety to the game but as soon as you overuse it the whole thing just gets annoying.
I only played from 06/03 to 12/06, so I never saw Hoth. I don’t even remember rain in SWG. We had faction building that could be PvE raided and destroyed by hacking a terminal with the right group make up of Classes. But player cities couldn't be touched. Buildings had decay if you didn’t pay your weekly tax and maintenance fees. If I am wrong and stuff was added after the Trials of Obi-Wan I would like to hear about it.
Ever attempt to add environment to games has been met with uproar, hack, and ways to disable them. The player base doesn’t want to be snuck upon in the dark, or lost in a blizzard or tsunami. One or two players may say they are all for it until they realize they can’t exploit it to their advantage. This is just another I want something I can use to my advantage, give me this exploitable feature. Wait, where's my exploit? I can’t use this, take it out immediately.Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
Message of the day : From 1900 - 1905 GMT we will be have the world changing event. If you want to see it please be there.
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Forum reply : This is so lame. How do I turn this off?Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
In survival games I think it's very fitting. In your run of the mill fantasy quest grinder, most players won't like it.
The only mmorpg I've played where weather was used well was FFXI.
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It would be great but it will not work in todays mmo's. The reason i say this is that people don't play mmo's for fun anymore, it is how many characters they can get to end game and how many of them will be fully geared before the next subs starts mentality.
It the old days it would have work because it took so much time to level up that you had to like questing, farming, making friends in-game and also rp or duel and even raid ofr weeks or months to get all the gear to max out the character and really spend time playing the game to get anywhere.
I trully think that it could still work and be really fun but they won't have millions of subs like WoW or other type of mmo's if we do find that in a game in the future because of that new mentality players have.
Would love to see more weather in games. Nothing as fun as having a battle in a thunderstorm.
Historically the gameplay effects of weather have been pretty lame for the most part (and not without reason; it's hard to design fun weather effects without letting it become a real focal point of your game.) I do think it'd be interesting to see dynamic puddles form from rain (and water spells) based on the actual terrain beneath them, which then interacts with certain spells and interesting ways (Bioshock lightning-at-water-to-electrify-it sort of stuff.)
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Ryzom has the best weather system I've ever seen. There are real seasons, and the landscape changes. White in winter, flowers in spring, fall leaves, etc. And there's a day/night cycle. And weather, like rain. Some mats you want to dig up might only be available in a certain season, at night, in the rain, as an example.
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There was a random chance in Baldur's Gate for lightning to strike and potentially kill those wearing metal armor. That was kind of interesting.
A forest being dark has nothing to do with having 2 hours to play, logging in and finding a random hurricane on your server. I guess you would expect all the mobs to be out pathing as if nothing is going on because that is oh so in line with the OPs idea. Hey look! There's that bunch of 50 rats I need to kill out roaming around in 130mph winds and rain falling sideways while a storm surge destroys the beaches.
or even better, there's a troll walking casually through a volcanic eruption while the pyro plastic flow burns his arse up.
EQ set the mood you describe over a decade ago. It's not new. Having earthquakes destroy a player city or blizzards lasting days is an entirely different horse and it ain't even close to the same color.
Very true.
I was responding to another comment in the thread though.