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Wanted: Mobs With Strengths and Weaknesses in MMORPGs
cantankerousmage
Member UncommonPosts: 992
Pencil-and-paper Dungeons &Dragons has/had it. Even the stupid original single-player Final
Fantasy (which I enjoyed as a kid) had it. I want to have to burn
trolls to overcome their regenerative ability. I don't want to be able
to hurt fire elementals with any spell, weapon, or power that is
fire-based. Perhaps it should even heal them instead. I want undead,
devils, and demons to be weaker against holy powers bestowed by a
good-aligned deity. Stuff like that. I don't think it's really all
that complicated, is it? It would certainly bring a little more tactics
and strategy back into MMORPGs. I prefer logic and being able to employ it in games.
Note: I would also prefer quests/missions/tasks whose progress/completion could be deduced and accomplished logically without the need for detailed quest descriptions or even generic/hold-your-hand/obvious quest givers. Player-characters should be able to make contracts with each other to perform tasks in exchange for barter/trade/reward. Please no more of Everquest 2-type wander around aimlessly until you figure out what in the world the quest wants you to do garbage.
Note: I would also prefer quests/missions/tasks whose progress/completion could be deduced and accomplished logically without the need for detailed quest descriptions or even generic/hold-your-hand/obvious quest givers. Player-characters should be able to make contracts with each other to perform tasks in exchange for barter/trade/reward. Please no more of Everquest 2-type wander around aimlessly until you figure out what in the world the quest wants you to do garbage.
Comments
fire mobs getting weaker in rain, watermobs getting stronger... basic DAoC features.
would love to see em again too.
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
Does Dark Age of Camelot use vertical level and/or gear progression?
Most singleplayer games do have weaknesses, even most co-op games I can think of have them.
I would think the reason for the lack of weaknesses in MMOs are for balance between players.
All stuff to be learned by the player so they can choose weapons and tactics suited to the situation (player skill). Not designed combat (don't stand in the red circle, fire when maw is open), just simple things that require knowledge, awareness and player skill to master - It is not that designed combat can't exist but it should not be the dominant/only tactical element.
The simplification and increased developer control over fights (over designed combat), has led to the loss of these important mechanics, and the tactical versatility and need for player thought and skill it brought.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
*By vertical gear progression, I mean unlimited, basically infinite levels and amounts of gear. There are limited qualities and quantities of equipment in the real world.
As for creating balance between players in that way, I don't believe its necessary. I posted the following on another forum in response to another poster who questioned the feasibility of introducing mob strengths and weaknesses into that particular game:
If I remember right, a magically enchanted weapon will do normal damage to almost anything. I believe that's the way it works, correct me if I'm wrong. The more heavily enchanted it is, the more damage it does (+1 to +5 in the old days). Magic in fantasy worlds is this really interesting thing that someone or something in that fictional universe created, formed, or evolved in order to do stuff like make pig flys. Or to make a pig as big as a house. You can even turn someone else into a pig or make a pig look like a toaster. Any of these and more are possible. Unless you're in a world that hasn't invented toasters. In the real world, a lot of people don't believe that magic exists. Anymore. Most people did in the past. But some religions still do. And certain crafts. It doesn't work, or it's not supposed to work, in the same way in the real world as it does in a fantasy world. But I digress.
In a fantasy world, weapons or items may also be enchanted with specific types of magic like fire or frost. A wizard might have spells capable of doing that for a limited duration or even permanently. A priest might be able to bless something with divine power in a similar way (more effective against undead, devils, and demons). Of course, you don't need your weapon or item to be enchanted thus if your weapon or item is already magical (at least + 1), but enchanting it in that way would help it do more damage or be more effective against creatures or anything that was weaker to that element or attribute. So, in game terms, if you don't have or can't afford to make lesser weapon enchantment of a particular kind, you could ask a Control Wizard or a Devoted Cleric to help you out. Also, say you encountered a deadly trap (that could actually poison you, inflict massive bodily harm, or even kill you) or a locked chest (or even a trapped chest! - magically or with poison, etc.). Rogues in rpgs usually have skills to deal with such things.
But making a Massively Multi-player Online Role-Playing Game, which should be a social game (I believe) so that players might need to ask another player for help with something, even something that doesn't directly have to do with combat at that exact moment, would be bad I guess. Helping people or asking for people to help you in an online game is for noobs.
Dungeons & Dragons basically started the RPG craze back in the 1970's, right? It's the big granddaddy of everything from Ultima to Final Fantasy to Everquest to World of Warcraft. So, why may I ask, is a Dungeons & Dragons game trying to be like one of its many HAMSTER children, WoW? Because WoW was popular and made money I guess. Except for the action combat, how is Neverwinter different from WoW in any meaningful way? WoW copied EQ and did it better with better graphics at just the right time, when more people were getting online than ever before. Everquest 2 came out around the same time, but it didn't do as well because it asked for people to have or buy too expensive and powerful of a computer at that time. I'm not sure exactly what influenced EQ in the beginning, but all I can think of is stupid Final Fantasy or Dragon Warrior/Quest. It is gear where you get most of your power for no apparent reason. And the next town or zone always has more powerful gear and monsters. Again, for no apparent reason. But even Final Fantasy has mobs with strengths and weaknesses.
I realize though that trying to apply any sort of logic to games based on Everquest and World of Warcraft is an exercise in futility, so I'll stop now.
And less need for player cooperation.
Edit: And without levels?
Yes to both though level have never increased past 50.
If you play on the freeshard gear progression comes more or less to a halt due to the stat caps and no expansions to add new gear.
You can basically level to 50, then put together a "template" of gear (combo of crafted and in game items) that puts all of your stats at cap.
Once done you need never mess with gear again (unless you decide to respec) leaving acquisition of realm points (by killing other players) to spend on realm abilities as the only character progression.
It's kinda nice to basically be "done" with your character to just focus on PVP without having to keep up in the gear "arms race"
It's a lesson they didn't learn in live which is what killed the game years ago.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Not necessarily D&D. But Dungeons & Dragons was "the first commercially available role-playing game". It basically borrowed most of its core ideas from J.R.R. Tolkien and combined The Hobbit/LoTR with other fantasy concepts such as Conan the Barbarian (which did proceed the Hobbit) and Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, etc. Other important influences were Beowulf, Arthurian Legend, Norse/Germanic Mythology, and the Song of Roland. The myths, legends, and folklore of basically the entire world were eventually incorporated into different manuals and systems.
(Quoting from Wikipedia)
"The history of role-playing games begins with an earlier tradition of role-playing, which combined with the rulesets of fantasy wargames in the 1970s to give rise to the modern role-playing game.[1] A role-playing game (RPG) is a type of game in which the participants assume the roles of characters and collaboratively create stories. Participants determine the actions of their characters based on their characterization, and the actions succeed or fail according to a system of rules and guidelines. Within the rules, they may improvise freely; their choices shape the direction and outcome of the games...
...The first commercially available role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), was published in 1974 by Gygax's TSR. TSR marketed the game as a niche product. Gygax expected to sell about 50,000 copies.[12] After establishing itself in boutique stores it developed a cult following.
The game's growing success spawned cottage industries and a variety of peripheral products. In a few years other fantasy games appeared, some of which blatantly copied the look and feel of the original game (one of the earliest competitors was Tunnels and Trolls).
Other early fantasy games included Chivalry & Sorcery and RuneQuest. Meanwhile, Science Fiction role-playing was introduced in "Metamorphosis Alpha", Traveller, and Gamma World" while the Superhero genre was first represented by Villains & Vigilantes. Live-action groups such as Dagorhir were started, and organized gaming conventions and publications such as Dragon Magazine catered to the growing hobby.
TSR launched Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) in the late 1970s. This ambitious project expanded the rules to a small library of hardcover books. These covered such minutiae as the chance of finding a singing sword in a pile of loot or the odds of coaxing gossip from a tavern keeper. Optional modules in the form of small booklets offered prepared adventure settings. The first edition Dungeon Master's Guide published in 1979 included a recommended reading list of twenty-five authors."
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_role-playing_games
So, anyone claiming to be trying to develop or design and MMORPG without the aid or influence of Dungeons & Dragons is fooling themselves.
I don't want to totally replicate D&D, but I think that many of the ideas it employed over they years are useful and worth considering when implementing any role-playing system.
So, you think it's worth playing on a freeshard?
I was around very shortly after the 1974 release. Yes, D&D was a new kind of gaming that took our hard-core miniatures and board games group by storm. We transformed our university gaming group from 100% SPI with occasional AH games to TSR games before we graduated in 79. Another gaming group formed completely around D&D sprung up in 78. It was, and is, a good game.
Computers came along with Akalabeth, the Ultima series, Wizardry and others, but the tried hard to adapt the original rules into computer terms. The difficult 'per day' spell rules from D&D were replaced by spell point systems. Only the Gold Box games attempted to keep the daily spell mechanism, and with the discontinuation of that series, the spell point mechanisms had won. The multiplayer aspect finally became computerized with the MMORPG. Coding allowed the game mechanics to resolve combat to become further removed from the player. Changes occurred, but were buried within the game.
But fundamentally, modern games haven't stepped away from the core elements and concepts of D&D. We are still accustomed to representing the human body as a pile of 'Hit Points', and death is depleting those HPs. We advance by XPs through levels with is marked with increasing combat skills. The computer evaluates the combat results for us, keeping our dice from rolling under inconvenient bits of furniture.
My question is, when are the core game concepts going to evolve? I do not believe that Gygax, Arneson and the Lake Geneva crowd found the absolute perfect way to abstract conflict in a story-telling medium. The analog systems which made it easy for humans to engage in combat and record the results are probably not the best ways to represent the human body (HP), protection (AC), capability (levels), progression (XP) and the like. Games haven't adapted to computers well enough to use real numbers instead of integers. The representation and presentation are one in the same, a definite hold-over from analog dice and math-on-the-fly to determine hits or misses.
The biggest issue I see holding back the RP genre is the lack of developers questioning some of these fundamentals, with a computerized rules engine to evaluate and enforce the rules consistently. We've not seen concepts developed for the computer, with new ideas and mechanisms to represent the human body in conflict. Where are other, less-predictable ways to represent health and life? You can easily determine how many 'ticks' you can stay in a vat of acid or the number of times a scruffy man can hit you in the face with a rusty axe when the player knows all this information for a game. (Don't ask your physician about either of these scenarios unless you want a psychiatric referral attached to your permanent medical records).
With core concepts now over 40 years old, is it any wonder that all our games play and feel so very much alike?
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
I tried DDO awhile ago, but I got bored when I had to start repeating instances at level 2. Also, even though Neverwinter is certainly not a better game than DDO, I enjoyed the combat better. First action combat MMORPG had played.
*I'm more interested in PvP now, and vertical level progression only works for PvE.