Can we Put the RPG back in MMORPG?

BitterClinger

Back in the late 90s, some of my dyed-in-the-wool RPG friends would scoff at tagging Ultima Online and EverQuest with the "RPG" label. The sad thing is MMORPGs have gotten even less RPGish as the years have gone by. Nowadays, they're more accurately called MMO-Brawlers.


Rather than paste in a wall of text, I created a video (no ads, not monetized).

anemo

You should look at Tree of Saviour's class system.   All the complex attributes are there, they all do different things(in some cases unintuitivly), As you advance your class you have to make hard decisions that will affect your gameplay.  Each class plays differently, even mechanics like wanting to take on crafting abilities are going to require you to take away from advancing a combat class.

bcbully

Before I even watch, amen to the title.

Velifax

That was unexpectedly excellent.

I specifically liked the analysis of character versus action combat. Having the players skills determine battle, I.e. Action combat, is wonderful. But there's no reason to neglect the other half of gaming!

bcbully

Nice vid man. Your stuff is getting better and better. I'm an action combat guy, from the pen and paper era. ESO has had the best Character Customization over the past 5-6 year imho. For two years with and an obscene amount of time played I continued to make new effective builds. They stopped making skills though. The character development stopped. I stopped playing.

You are correct about balance as well. Overall good stuff man. Thank you.


edit - No pvp? Nah man all mmorpgs will continue to become more and more PvP centric for lack of a better term. There will be more and more game play systems that may involve some form of pvp. Along with progression and development, worlds will become increasingly complex allowing players more ways to play with less and less "you can't do this". 

BitterClinger

anemo said:

You should look at Tree of Saviour's class system.   All the complex attributes are there, they all do different things(in some cases unintuitivly), As you advance your class you have to make hard decisions that will affect your gameplay.  Each class plays differently, even mechanics like wanting to take on crafting abilities are going to require you to take away from advancing a combat class.

I have actually just watched a video about Tree of Savior, and it was kind of a negative video... but it actually has me very interested in the game. I think I will install it and give it a try.

Theocritus

anemo said:

You should look at Tree of Saviour's class system.   All the complex attributes are there, they all do different things(in some cases unintuitivly), As you advance your class you have to make hard decisions that will affect your gameplay.  Each class plays differently, even mechanics like wanting to take on crafting abilities are going to require you to take away from advancing a combat class.

Except that is has heavy asian and anime influence

flguy147

Great video.  I love both PVP and PVE but i love that part about players playing support roles and stuff in PVE.  People actually playing a class and role instead of an epeen contest on a damage meter.  For me its way more fun that way when you have players doing such roles and i think it helps take out the contest between players in the same group trying to finish a dungeon and raid.  I do feel like MMOs have become too much of if you arent specced this way i wont play with you, etc.  I know there has always been players like that but its more common now.  And i think really bringing back "real" roles in games will help that.

BitterClinger

bcbully said:

Nice vid man. Your stuff is getting better and better. I'm an action combat guy, from the pen and paper era. ESO has had the best Character Customization over the past 5-6 year imho. For two years with and an obscene amount of time played I continued to make new effective builds. They stopped making skills though. The character development stopped. I stopped playing.

You are correct about balance as well. Overall good stuff man. Thank you.


edit - No pvp? Nah man all mmorpgs will continue to become more and more PvP centric for lack of a better term. There will be more and more game play systems that may involve some form of pvp. Along with progression and development, worlds will become increasingly complex allowing players more ways to play with less and less "you can't do this". 

There is no doubt that PVP is a popular genre. However, I laughed out loud when people complained that their fighter/warrior types had little chance against wizard/mage type characters in early MMORPGs. Coming from a D&D background, this was no surprise to me.


Whether we're talking about the Lich at the end of Tomb or Horrors or Strahd in the Ravenloft series, Wizards/Mages are typically quite capable of being more than a handful for an entire party of adventurers.

iixviiiix

in MMORPG , you role playing with other player , not NPC .
And those Dev.ils  removed all the tools and reasons to role playing with other .

waynejr2

Aori said:

Only if we can put the Massively back into MMORPG first. There are plenty of RPGs but as for MMOs well its hard to tell anymore.

However, before anything else they have to put the game back.  Nothing else is more important!

Roin

Vardahoth said:

Aori said:

Only if we can put the Massively back into MMORPG first. There are plenty of RPGs but as for MMOs well its hard to tell anymore.

That is because they really aren't mmo's. And the way the solo-centric mechanics defines the design of these "mmos", you will never see another mmorpg game unless a company is willing to scrap the WoW model.

Being able to solo in a MMORPG does not make it any less of a MMORPG. Anymore then being group centric makes something more of a MMORPG.

Gaming.Rocks2

Well at least you still need to login to play all these games so the devs stayed true to the O part. Thank god we don't have any Freudians here.

wiennas

frankly I have no idea how can you show BDO as some good ''reference point'' right development,...in any category,the game represent everything what's wrong with today mmos. If you take BDO as a good reference point, you have MMpvp games, as long as you like such type of games - good have fun, but I am of the opinion that you speak from a niche perspective, already after 1 month of über hype & prise the game have less population as GW2 today,...after 6 months Asta might have bigger population as BDO. At the same time, why do you present ''action combat'' as something new, it is renamed hack & slash, and even in this is BDO overall terrible, you have tons of people who complain about the gameplay. Your statements about pvp or pve,... it's not the pve type of players who want to be forced into pvp, nor they are asking for such options,...secondly without holy trinity, attribution system, you get prety much a ''clone army.'' Might be good for ''pvp'', while without holy trinity you get quickly hack & slash, rushing games, solo ''online games''....if you like such games - fine, have fun.

anemo

Theocritus said:

anemo said:

You should look at Tree of Saviour's class system.   All the complex attributes are there, they all do different things(in some cases unintuitivly), As you advance your class you have to make hard decisions that will affect your gameplay.  Each class plays differently, even mechanics like wanting to take on crafting abilities are going to require you to take away from advancing a combat class.

Except that is has heavy asian and anime influence

I'll go and say that it's an acceptable reason to not like a game.  

But when it comes down to it to play a specific mechanic you're going to have to settle.

BitterClinger

wiennas said:

frankly I have no idea how can you show BDO as some good ''reference point'' right development,...in any category,the game represent everything what's wrong with today mmos. If you take BDO as a good reference point, you have MMpvp games, as long as you like such type of games - good have fun, but I am of the opinion that you speak from a niche perspective, already after 1 month of über hype & prise the game have less population as GW2 today,...after 6 months Asta might have bigger population as BDO. At the same time, why do you present ''action combat'' as something new, it is renamed hack & slash, and even in this is BDO overall terrible, you have tons of people who complain about the gameplay. Your statements about pvp or pve,... it's not the pve type of players who want to be forced into pvp, nor they are asking for such options,...secondly without holy trinity, attribution system, you get prety much a ''clone army.'' Might be good for ''pvp'', while without holy trinity you get quickly hack & slash, rushing games, solo ''online games''....if you like such games - fine, have fun.

I just want to clarify, I'm not suggesting that BDO is some new level or reference point in role-playing mechanics. I absolutely consider it another MMO brawler in a long line of MMO brawlers. However, it has more character development mechanics than Tera or Blade and Soul.

nariusseldon

BitterClinger said:

Back in the late 90s, some of my dyed-in-the-wool RPG friends would scoff at tagging Ultima Online and EverQuest with the "RPG" label. The sad thing is MMORPGs have gotten even less RPGish as the years have gone by. Nowadays, they're more accurately called MMO-Brawlers.

Why is it sad? If i want real RPG, i play tabletop D&D with my kid & his friend in my dining room.

Computer games are for other things .. like hack-n-slash. Plus, RPG is just a label. If MMO does not mean much ... RPG probably also does not mean much, at least in computer gaming anyway. 

Brabbit1987

Well, I am working on a game that hopefully fixes majority if not all of these sorts of issues. But, it's single player and multiplayer, but not an MMO. Rather you create your own servers for multiplayer, I suppose similar to what you would expect of creating a server for minecraft. So in a sense you can achieve the same feeling of it being an MMO to some extent.

Po_gg

Agree on many things in the vid, except the beginning... but maybe I'm just too old-school. Rpg is only a smaller part about char.development, the main element is roleplaying (at least with us). Living inside the world, story decisions over dice rolls, etc. Occasionally a new level (sometimes took months) or a learned skill, but that never was the "core" gameplay...
Sure, as a theory-crafter at heart I can understand your need for it in games, and that's why I missed CO (Hero system is great) or TSW from the vid

Fully agree on the pvp part, I'm saying that since years, actually was one of the reasons I left the online rpgs in the late '90s similar to your "some of my dyed-in-the-wool RPG friends would scoff at tagging Ultima Online and EverQuest with the "RPG" label."   The very core philosophy of rpg was from right at the start to ditch the constant competiton factor present in every game out there, and focusing onto cooperation instead. It's a whole different mindset, and it was a new thing back then.
I remember somewhere in the mid-'90s I heard first in the den, from some newbies, "my character would totally kick your's ass" and we laughed them out for good What's the point, every character has different strengths and weaknesses, and they aren't learning their skills focusing on beating each other... Agree on the "mythical Balance creature" part as well.

(in this section I missed somewhat Lucimia which will be a pure PvE title, while you mentioned Pantheon a lot, which will have PvP - true, they say the pvp will never affect PvE the slightest, and there won't be PvE-breaking tweaks just for seeking the non-existing "balance")

Liked the action combat part. I don't care about combat, the least important part for me in an rpg, but this is the reason I prefer regular mmo combat over action one. Rpg is about the character, not about the player. (p'n'p folks, separating player knowledge and character knowledge, rings a bell?)  Why should affect for example a successfully landed hit for my character, how precisely I aim as a player? There's a miss chance, enemy's dodge chance, etc. etc.
Action combat may be faster, and twitchy, and please the trigger-happy crowd, but in concept it's just as dumb as:
-ok, obviously I'm the strongest one in the party, I'll try to lift it. (grabbing the dice)
-forget the rolls. Let's see, it's about half a ton, so... drop down and do 30 push-ups in 20 seconds, then your character will lift it.
-dafuq, dude?

(and before all, for the record, etc.:  I'm (or at least was 15 years ago ) quite good with action and twitchy gameplay, has some serious CS and Q:A history, love (real) pvp as in shooters, board and card games, strategy, in sports, etc.  BUT rpg is about PvE, cooperation, roleplay and story. For me, at least)

UnleadedRev

I agree with the OP 1000%

Kyleran

Gaming.Rocks said:

Well at least you still need to login to play all these games so the devs stayed true to the O part. Thank god we don't have any Freudians here.

Doesn't Elite Dangerous let players flip between Online and Offline mode? (maybe solo only mode is a better descriptor for the latter, you still are online I think)

Vermillion_Raventhal

MMORPG were designed to be RPG in a sense that they were simulations that you could play a citizen in the world to play a role.  

Players largely ignore this because there is no accountability. UO quickly showed the results of this by showing the worst of the player base.  This simulation way of gaming had largely died out in the genre.

MMORPG has incorporated more RPG in themepark era.  The problem is they created personal story negating the point of having online framework. 

Kyleran

Brabbit1987 said:

Well, I am working on a game that hopefully fixes majority if not all of these sorts of issues. But, it's single player and multiplayer, but not an MMO. Rather you create your own servers for multiplayer, I suppose similar to what you would expect of creating a server for minecraft. So in a sense you can achieve the same feeling of it being an MMO to some extent.

First rule of computer game development, you can't fix most of the problems.

There will be limitations and constraints from technology as well as the fact choosing one design path will preclude other choices.

One of the biggest is whether to make a massively multiplayer game or not.  If you decide to create one there's a host of limitations you inherit, and for every decision afterwards you will please some folks but alienate others.

Look at Narius, you'll lose him right at the start if you make it a massively multiplayer design and if you want to charge money for it, he's probably gone for sure.

Going the solo route is how you'll garner his attention, but you won't impress players like me or other "whales" who actually pay for MMOs in a big way.

Minecraft made it big selling millions upon millions of copies to a very broad audience, surprisingly appealing to children which greatly enhanced its success

MMORPGS such as BDO clearly target players willing to cough up a low box price, (excluding the F2P only crowd) but its cash shop model clearly target it towards gamers with more of a propensity to pay for in game convenience.

Pick your target market (make sure its broad enough to be financially viable) then make sure to develop the best game possible for it, and ignore trying to fix every "problem.

Randayn

The inclusion of and building around of PVP in a game is and always will be an easy way for devs to make a game.  They don't have to create anything...just let people compete to see who's man-junk is bigger.

PVP in and of itself, is an adolescent form of gaming where the "inner cave man" can show himself in a game because they can't do it in real life or have extreme ego issues.

The fact that people actually do say "my guy can beat your guy" in a game, prooves all the above pretty sufficiently.

I remember, when I was about 8 years old, I would have the "my ice cream is bigger than yours" and "I can eat my sandwich faster than you" competitions....yeah....that was when I was 8.  I've moved on....

I own my real world...have no desire to "own" MMORPG's or their players....

BitterClinger

Leon1e said:

pve carebear detected.

That explains everything, except...

 - Screenshot of me doing RVR in DAoC...
 - Video of me racking up a Mastery performance in World of Tanks...
 - I didn't include my achievement for 100K Honorable Kills in World of Warcraft...
 - Or any screenshots of me fighting port battles in Pirates of the Burning Sea...

But you're right, I don't have to have PVP in every game I play. 

Truhaze

BitterClinger said:

bcbully said:

Nice vid man. Your stuff is getting better and better. I'm an action combat guy, from the pen and paper era. ESO has had the best Character Customization over the past 5-6 year imho. For two years with and an obscene amount of time played I continued to make new effective builds. They stopped making skills though. The character development stopped. I stopped playing.

You are correct about balance as well. Overall good stuff man. Thank you.


edit - No pvp? Nah man all mmorpgs will continue to become more and more PvP centric for lack of a better term. There will be more and more game play systems that may involve some form of pvp. Along with progression and development, worlds will become increasingly complex allowing players more ways to play with less and less "you can't do this". 

There is no doubt that PVP is a popular genre. However, I laughed out loud when people complained that their fighter/warrior types had little chance against wizard/mage type characters in early MMORPGs. Coming from a D&D background, this was no surprise to me.


Whether we're talking about the Lich at the end of Tomb or Horrors or Strahd in the Ravenloft series, Wizards/Mages are typically quite capable of being more than a handful for an entire party of adventurers.

I agree completely BitterClinger. As an example....Almost every decent MMORPG has been ruined by player character balancing due to a poor quality player base. Yes I am pointing out the players here whom still blame the world for their own inadequacies, and think everything in life should be fair. LOL...The original DoAC was without argument the best PVP/RVR game produced. It formed the base for all PVP/RVR games to date. Once the masses started protesting that casters/healers were "overpowered" or melee classes armors were too impenetrable, they ruined the game with balancing. Which at the end of the day is why we are all complaining about poor quality games. Over the past 15 years games have started catering to the none RPG based player group. RPG'rs want a game base where they can work together to figure out quests, advance as a character, and build relationships with fellow characters. MMORPG'rs want a game with a fucking blue line leading you to your next quest objective, and someone to hold your hand when you whine "its not fair".... Welcome to WoW.... I blame every last one of us for whining and allowing this game/playstyle to come into existence. <I am including myself, as I initially drank the Koolaid and purchased several WoW accounts. In hopes it would be something more, or that it would improve> 

My apologies for the rant there, but I have been saving up this hostility for almost 15 years! haha